Once More Unto the Breach, Volume 2
by moonswirl
Summary: SOMEWHERE UNSEEN ABOVE THE EARTH, THERE IS A BREACH. Across that breach, there lies another Earth. A broken Earth. And there's trouble brewing on both of them. A weapon that must not be made, a plot to uncover before it's too late, and heroes brought together. Daily lead up/AU crossover between The Flash, Supergirl, Arrow, and Legends of Tomorrow. (combined with volume 1)
1. DAY 002 (vol 2, ch 1)

**_A/N:_** _Well here we go! This is my third year of running these '100 days to...' stories, the first year for Supergirl, last year for the four series of the Arrowverse. Last year I did it as smaller, separate blocks, but this year, because ambition got to me, I decided to make it a single, 100-day/chapter story. And I decided to craft myself a big ol' alternate universe, enabling me to start planning toward it well in time. So I've been preparing for this since last fall and now it's time to start! Of course, you may have seen the series of single chapter stories I've been putting out over the past few months, the 24 'Preludes,' giving you a peek into this other world (I highly recommend going back to check them out, for further information and lead up to this story.)_

 _The only other maintenance issue left for me to pass on has to do with the posting format. As it's not possible for me to create a story marked as crossing over between all four of the shows, I've split it into two volumes, one under the heading of The Flash and Supergirl, the other under the heading of Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow. The odd-numbered chapters will be in the former, the even-numbered in the latter. The easiest way to follow the story would be to put in for notification on both. Now on to the story!_

* * *

 **ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH  
** _Day 2 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 1_

 **Location:**  
 **BREACH EARTH, HAVEN QUARTER**  
 _ **(ARGUS designation)**_

There was little to be done. Best as they knew, their message would be passed on through a number of channels before reaching its destination, and while they didn't know what those channels were or how long it would take before they knew it had made it across… they had no choice. For twenty years, Robert and Moira Queen had believed their children had died in the events which at once created this cracked twin to Earth and propelled them on to it. With no way of knowing any better, all they could do was to live on, carrying their grief even as they became the Queens of Breach Earth, of Haven Quarter, who had no children as far as anyone knew. They had long mastered the habit of hiding their true natures, passing themselves for humans when they were not, so why should it be any problem passing themselves for being childless, right?

And all this time they had to live this lie, knowing they had played a hand in it… and that another player was within their midst. Malcolm Merlyn… How long had they tried to keep him out of their lives after coming here, and then he'd gone and told them what he'd told them…

Their children were alive. Oliver. Thea. They lived, back on the other Earth. When Malcolm had approached her and revealed this to her, she'd been certain this was little more than a trick, and how could she think anything else? Part of her would wish that they'd never crossed paths with him, that she'd never… had that moment of weakness with him. But then if not for that weakness, she would never have had the joy that was her little girl, her Thea… for how little she'd gotten to see of her in the end. Three years she'd had with her before the events leading to their being ripped apart, but she wouldn't trade them in for anything.

As little as she wanted to believe Malcolm, knowing what it would do to her, to Robert, when it was inevitably shown to be a lie, all of it had been thrown upside down when she'd been shown those pictures and in looking at them, she'd known… it was all true. And more than being shown that her children were alive, she'd been shown that not only had they come into their gift, their _speed_ … They'd been using it in the guise of costumed heroes.

The revelation might have been seen as a gift, and little could be denied of the joy it had brought both her and her husband, but they knew better than to ignore the thorn on the rose. He claimed only to have learned this truth recently, but this much she would not believe, which then had left them with the inevitable question: Why now?

After Robert had been told of the encounter, they had needed to know, without a doubt, that the pictures and the proof they claimed to carry were indeed genuine. They had gone to one of their young allies. Iris West was one of the few in their circle, of those who knew the truth about them, who was human, and they had come to know of her, of all things, via their ties to Malcolm Merlyn. In knowing him, and his son, they had met Joseph West, and his children. Of Merlyn, of West, the less said the better, but their children…Tommy, Iris, Wallace… In their own ways, each one had been friends to the Queens, allies.

Iris had confirmed the pictures had not been doctored, but then in doing so, in realizing the potential implications of Malcolm dropping this truth on them at this time, she had been left to reach the same conclusions and add to them. Malcolm was up to something… and maybe her father was, too. Whether or not it might have ended up playing right in their hands, the first thing they'd sought to do was to reach out to their children, off on Main Earth. No matter what came next, they would face it and maybe, just maybe, they would get to hold their son and daughter in their arms again, and stand at their side to stop Merlyn and West…

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

The message was to be put in the hands of someone they might trust to get it to where it needed to go, on the other Earth. Two of those links had been established through Iris West. It might have seemed a strange place to start, but she had counseled them to start off entrusting their message to a former associate of her father's called John Diggle, though she also knew of him through another name he'd been given: Deathstroke. Iris had promised the Queens that, on this, they could trust the man wholeheartedly, especially for his connection to the one she believed would be able to get the message to its destination. She had told the couple of a woman from Main Earth who, having found herself stranded on their Earth, had crossed paths with Diggle, who had been trained by him. Sara Lance. Back on Main Earth now she had a new name of her own… the Green Arrow.

The message was an envelope, which contained a letter to her, explaining what was required of her, two sealed envelopes – letters, addressed to Oliver and Thea Queen respectively – and a necklace, as might be seen as proof both to messenger and messaged that the person who received it was who they said they were, and that the person who brought it was telling the truth when they said…

"Mr. Queen, my name is Sara Lance. I have a message from your mother and father."

The envelope had been sealed by Moira Queen herself, handed down to Iris West, who had sought out John Diggle and handed it to him. He in turn had put it into the care of his ex-wife, Lyla Michaels, a CSI with the police who also had connections to ARGUS and who would be able to get that envelope into the hands of Sara Lance. This had been achieved when Lyla had contacted the team aboard the ARGUS Breach Ship Waverider and passed the message to its leader, Leonard Snart. One trip through the breach later, he had flown down and completed the delivery.

Once Sara had opened the envelope, finding the sealed letters, the necklace, and the letter addressed to her, all she'd needed to do was to track down the speedster siblings. Like just about anyone in the city, she'd heard of this Flash and Kid Flash, as the media had taken to calling them, though she'd never met them personally, didn't know their identities until the letter she'd received effectively confirmed it. As she'd come to find, not only having the necklace but placing it well in view when she'd gone to intercept the brother and sister had been something of an asset. When she'd tracked them down, she had addressed them by their names, figuring there was no point beating around the fact that she knew who they were. And after that, well… they were speedsters, and as best she could guess, they had started to run away, only to stop again when the one they called the Flash spotted the necklace, recognized it, and took it from her.

"Where did you get this?" he'd asked. "This was my mother's, where did you get it?" The girl stood a few feet away, keeping her eyes on her but also looking as though she only wanted to look at the necklace in her brother's hand, once he'd said who it belonged to. If this was all going to work, then they needed to trust her, to listen to her. So, with a breath, she'd pushed down her hood, removed her mask, that she might look to them with her own face.

"Mr. Queen, my name is Sara Lance. I have a message from your mother and father," she'd said, as straightforward as one could get.

There was hesitation, she could see. If they asked how she knew their names, it would be admitting that those _were_ their names, but if they didn't, then they wouldn't get the answers they were seeking, even though confirming the necklace for having belonged to their mother had already more or less done the job. Maybe realizing this, the Flash had reached up to undo his own mask.

"What are you doing?" his sister asked, still looking unwilling to reveal herself.

"Our parents are dead. Whatever this is, I wouldn't have thought the Green Arrow would stoop to this…"

"Your parents are alive, Mr. Queen. They went through a lot of trouble to make sure you knew. It's my understanding that _they_ thought _you_ were killed, twenty years ago. Here…" she pulled the envelope from her pocket. "Along with the necklace were a letter to you, and to your sister. There's also the letter I received, so you'll know what I know. I didn't open your letters."

She watched as he pulled the contents of the envelope. When he saw the handwriting on the smaller envelopes marked 'Oliver' and 'Thea,' she could see his breath catch. Soon, his sister finally approached, one last hesitation before pulling off her own mask.

"Are you familiar with the breach?" Sara asked the pair of them. By the way they looked at her now, she took it as a yes. "As far as I can tell, when whatever happened that you all thought the others were dead happened, they were thrown out there, across the breach, to the other Earth. The same thing happened to me, a few years ago, I lived out there for a while, that's why they reached out to me to get this message to you. Although, from what I hear, they might have skipped right over me if Leonard and his people knew what was in that envelope. They're the ones who brought it across from Breach Earth."

"Leonard Snart?" Oliver asked, surprised. "On the Waverider?"

"Yes," she confirmed. "I should go. If you need to reach me, there's my number in there," she nodded to the envelope even as she got her mask and hood back on. With a nod to the pair of them and a 'good luck,' she was gone.

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH  
** **HOME OF OLIVER & THEA QUEEN**

There had been no point pretending as though their heads were still where they'd been before they'd been approached by the Green Arrow… Sara… The costumes had been put away, they were home now, just Oliver and Thea, each of them holding a letter addressed to them from their mother… who they'd believed to be dead for the better part of their lives. The third letter, the one addressed to Sara, sat on the table between them, along with the necklace. Neither of them knew what to say or where to start.

Twenty years… Oliver looked to his sister, who'd just been so small at the time, only three years old, when they'd lost their parents and been put into the care of the man who would be their guardian, their father. They would have to tell Anatoly in time, too. He had been with them, through all these years, had seen them through any number of adjustments. While _he_ had known that his family wasn't human, known about the gift of speed they had, he'd only known for all of a year before their parents had 'died' and taken all future source of information with them. He'd had to go on from what he'd been told and put the pieces together as far as the rest went… all on his own. And by the time his sister had come into her speed, he had been able to guide her, teach her. It was at that same time that he'd learned their guardian had always known about the things Oliver had been working so hard to hide from him all along. And he'd told him something which had shaped the many years to come, for both siblings.

Whatever had happened to their parents, whatever had supposedly killed them… they'd known it might happen. It wasn't an accident. For years since then he had been trying to find out more, on his own and with his sister. There'd been nothing. And now… now here were these letters. There was no telling what was inside those, what would or wouldn't be said. The fact that they came from their mother already was enough of a miracle, right up there with the fact that their parents were even alive at all…

"I can't seem to pick it up…" Thea broke the silence, and he looked at her, sitting there, arms folded in together, staring at the envelope, her name written there.

"You don't have to do it now," he insisted. After a few seconds, he asked if she wanted them to call Anatoly and ask him to come over. She didn't say it, but he could see it on her face, so he'd called him. The once detective and now police captain had been looking after them all these years, their closest ally and the only one to know their secret. Thea had only ever known him for a parent, had called him 'Papa Toly' for as long as Oliver could remember. Now faced with the return of the parents she didn't remember, it was no wonder she'd want him around.

When he had arrived, with no idea why he'd been summoned, he'd found a pair of gloomy looking faces, and the contents of the envelope given to them by the Green Arrow. The letter she'd left within the envelope did not contain her name, so they'd showed it, too. Much as they trusted Anatoly, he was still with the police, and the Green Arrow was by all accounts a vigilante. They'd taken away the paper with her contact information, too.

Looking to the one unsealed letter, the two sealed ones, and the necklace, Anatoly had been told of the encounter, and the news: Robert and Moira Queen were alive, safe and sound over on Breach Earth. There had been relief in the man's face, hearing his old friends were alive. Of course now he understood the nature of the summons, and he looked to Thea, who still had not touched the envelope with her name written on it.

"I have told you both, many times, about your mother and father, about the people they were. They placed the two of you in my care, they protected you. Those are the people I knew, and whatever these past twenty years have brought, for them and for you…" he slid the envelope closer to her. "You remain the most important things to them." Thea looked up at him, at her brother. Oliver picked up the necklace from the table, moving without a word to stand behind her, fastening the chain around her neck. She looked down to the pendant, touched it for a moment, and then picked up the envelope and opened it.

X

 **THREE HOURS LATER**

Standing in costume once again, the Flash and Kid Flash stood in wait, just where they'd been instructed to wait, until the small ship appeared overhead and descended to land not far from where they stood. They waited until they could see who would step down to meet them. They were soon approached by two women they recognized. Of the ten who followed Leonard Snart along aboard the Waverider, three were agents acting as direct liaison with ARGUS, and Ava Sharpe and Lucy Lane were two thirds of that trio. That they'd only sent the jump ship could either mean that the main ship was off on some other task, or that they hadn't seen it to be necessary to send the entire crew to act as ferry for two people.

For all the two speedsters had done for them, they had never revealed their identities to them, hence the costumes. Even now, the two women were not aware of the reason for their needing a ride over to the Haven Quarter of Breach Earth, only that they had contacted Leonard Snart, and he had arranged for the jump ship to come and collect them and carry them through the breach.

The ride bordered on awkwardly quiet. The two agents might have sensed there was something about this trip which made the two speedsters nervous. Either way, they focused on getting them where they needed to go. The one thing that seemed to get their passengers out of their heads was when the moment came where the jump ship approached the breach opening before them, flew through it, and emerged on the other side into… a world on first glance so similar to the one they'd just left that they might not have believed they'd gone anywhere if they hadn't seen the moment where they'd made the crossing.

"Do you know how long this will take?" Agent Sharpe asked from the seat next to Agent Lane, who piloted the ship. "We may have to leave you and return for you later."

"Sounds good," was all Oliver knew to say. There was no telling how this meeting would go, but it was probably best that they got more time than less.

Soon the jump ship touched down, and the siblings stepped down on to Breach Earth. The two agents wished them the best of luck before flying off once again.

"How are we supposed to find them?" Thea asked her brother after they'd changed out of their suits. There was no address anywhere in the letters, or the envelope. Oliver looked around. This city looked so much like their own, so… maybe… He looked back to his sister. She had no memories of their old house, before they'd gone to live with Anatoly. He'd shown it to her once, in passing, but that was all. Maybe this other world wasn't _that_ similar, but then again… maybe the key to finding their parents was to just go home.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in Volume 1)_


	2. DAY 004 (vol 2, ch 2)

_Day 4 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 2_

 **Location:**  
 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 _ **(ARGUS designation)**_

There were days where it became harder to trust in their mission… what little remained of it. The three of them had been gone from their home world much longer than they could feel, having spent so much of it in stasis, and even now that they were awake, living on Earth, things were so far from what they'd thought they would be. The names they had been born to hardly seemed to belong to them anymore. First they had been given human names, the better for them to be passed off as that, and it just became easier to use those, although between the three of them they would occasionally refer to one another by their positions within the crew, their rank. The pilot, the second-in-command, the captain… On Earth they had come to be known as Rory Regan, as Roy Harper, as Felicity Smoak, but then… by virtue of the powers granted them by the yellow sun, they had been granted more names… Valor, and Superman, and Supergirl…

They had left their home world, with one goal, to apprehend a fugitive. And then there'd been the incident, leaving them in stasis for all those years, before one by one they had awakened. It was upon this awakening that they'd been faced with two revelations. The first was the years that had passed them by, and the second… Whatever their fugitive had been up to, he was just gone. There was no finding him, no matter how much they tried. And so they'd been forced to make a choice. They couldn't just go back home. Too much would have changed, and what would be the point if they came back empty handed. So there they were, on Earth, gifted with these incredible powers, under the care of those who had found and assisted them, ARGUS. Before they knew it, under the disguises of these new, 'super' identities, they had done all they could to make themselves useful, but they hadn't forgotten the mission. The fugitive. Here on Earth, before he'd disappeared, they knew he had assumed the name of Malcolm Merlyn.

There had been no trace of the man, not as long as they'd been here, nothing that would lead them to him. But then today…

When they'd fly through and land into a walk, in the beginning, agents would do a double take. Now, it was just normal, wasn't it? They just kept on walking. Except today, someone was hurrying toward them out of those casual agents. Felicity smiled when she saw Agent Dinah Drake coming toward them. She'd been there from the start, when she had woken up here, so long after her second and their pilot, she'd been invaluable, she'd been… like a sister to her. As she approached however it was clear this was not just her checking in after they'd come in from the city. There was a look in Dinah's eyes, something serious, something… No, it couldn't possibly be…

"Come with me," she'd told the three of them, keeping her voice low. With a nod, they had followed her, out of the hallway and into an empty room, so she might present them with a tablet. She handed it to Felicity, who looked to it at once. "I thought you should know," Dinah started, her tone telling plainly how she hoped to instill caution at the same time as she risked the opposite by giving them what she was giving them.

Earlier that day, the team of the Waverider was called on to escort two people across the breach. Before they could agree to do anything, they'd had to be given a reason why, and they'd been given it, in the form of three letters. Those letters had been allowed to be processed, though the originals were returned to their owners. Two of the three documents were personal, private, but for the sake of getting them across the breach they had been shared. And in those two personal letters, a name had been inscribed, as a warning. Whoever had composed those letters, she had written them to her children, and she had warned them that there was a man calling himself Malcolm Merlyn, and that man was dangerous, might somehow find a way to get to them.

Malcolm Merlyn… their fugitive. Seeing the name written there, plain as day, repeatedly, it was like waking up from a deep sleep, fully awake… again.

"We need to get to Breach Earth, we need to talk to this woman, Moira," Felicity read the name at the bottom of both letters.

"Take it easy," Dinah begged her, something easier said than done, though Felicity did try. "Now look, the Waverider will be making for Haven before long, dropping down half their team to look in on this. I've already talked to Director Heywood, I'm headed there, too, and you've been cleared to follow."

"Good," Felicity looked to her crewmates like she was about to step into captain mode, but then Dinah started again.

"I realize this is the mission for you three, but for now this is still only a small lead, and there's another situation, something I brought to the director myself. I would have been following the other half of the Waverider team, but this Merlyn thing…" She wanted to accompany Felicity, knowing what it meant to her, and for that the captain was infinitely thankful. "But you two might be of great use to them out there," she'd looked to Roy and Rory. They turned to their captain for her decision.

It was easy for everyone else, whether they knew of the ranking or not, to look to Roy as the trio's leader. The one they'd called Superman _had_ been the first to wake after all, for a while the only one of the three of them awake and active on Earth, and he'd made a name for himself by the time the pilot had awakened, too, before he'd been called Rory, called Valor. And their captain… she'd been the last of them, and maybe for that they'd forget. But her second and their pilot never forgot. It was her choice, her command.

She had consented, and so they would all depart, meeting the Waverider and its team, to cross the breach into Haven, before Superman and Valor followed the half that was set to sail into Mist.

X

 **BREACH EARTH, HAVEN QUARTER**

It would have been easy to run instead of walk as they did, but it never seemed like the thing to do. And just maybe, deep down, it had felt much more important to be aware of their surroundings. This place looked like their city in almost every way, but the longer they walked around here, the more it seemed like they could feel the difference. This wasn't their city, it was a whole other Earth, and there was no telling how things worked here. For the time being, they were going to play it like there was nothing different about them.

Getting on to the way to their old house, all Oliver could think was that this was the most surreal thing he'd ever experienced, even more than the first time he'd ever gotten to use his speed. They were the same streets, and everywhere he would come by small landmarks, a tree, or a store sign, and suddenly he'd be twelve years old again… going home. After he and Thea had moved in with Anatoly, after they'd gone back to the house to get their things, anything they'd want to keep of their deceased parents, he had never set foot there again, never needed to take this path, but now here he was and it was all coming back to him. Maybe it would all be wrong in the end, maybe they wouldn't be at the house and they'd have a different home somewhere else, but they had no other leads, and until then it was as good of a guess as any. So they carried on, Thea constantly looking around, taking it in, and him, so quiet… recalling.

When he could see it in the short distance ahead of them, he'd stopped. That had been their house… it looked just as he remembered it… Oh, was he dreaming, it even smelled like he remembered, being out here.

"Olly, are you sure about this?" Thea had asked him. Maybe she was experiencing her own share of feelings. The house wouldn't mean the same to her as it did to him, but even so there was no way it wouldn't mean anything.

"Yeah…" he'd nodded after a few seconds. "I'm sure." He'd looked at her, giving her a smile he hoped would be reassuring before they walked on toward the door. He was sure, he was so sure… If he was wrong…

The door opened before they ever reached it to ring the bell, and there before them stood their father.

He had aged, his hair and beard streaked in silver, but one look at him and the pair standing just a few feet away from him had felt a knowing jolt at the sight of him, just as he'd felt one, seeing them, and there was no doubt. They stood there for several seconds as though frozen, but then their father blinked, looked over their heads and all around even as he waved them through the door, stepping away to let them in. It was only after they'd walked in and he'd shut the door that he'd looked to the pair of them and just… His eyes welled up with tears, his hands shook as he reached out, one to his daughter's cheek, the other to his son's. Alive, all three of them, twenty mistaken years later, Oliver and Thea Queen stood with their father's arms around them, and they held to him just as quick, the reality of the moment sinking in properly, shaking tears out of them, too.

"You got the message," he'd spoken after a minute.

"Earlier today," Oliver had confirmed. Robert pulled back, to look at their faces, an indelible smile over his features. He was speechless.

"Where's…" Thea started to ask, and he blinked, remembering.

"Your mother isn't here, she went to visit a friend. Come with me, I'll take you to her."

X

 **HOME OF IRIS WEST, HAVEN QUARTER**

They had done their part. The message had been sent on its way, and from there all they could do was wait for… something. And until such a time as their reaching out resulted in someone reaching back, there were other things for them to hold their attention. Like Malcolm Merlyn.

He'd gone to ground. Him and Joseph West both. Iris had not been able to raise either of them since the day Merlyn had gone to Moira and told her about Oliver and Thea being alive. She would have been shocked if she hadn't expected just as much from him. Truth be told, she couldn't say for sure whether he had expected for her to be too distracted by the search to reunite with her children to notice he was gone, or whether he had known she would see through him and just didn't care one way or the other. All that she did know was that those two being M.I.A. was about the last thing any one of them would need.

Moira knew this would weigh heavily on the girl, just as it would on Merlyn's son. It seemed so plainly unlikely that the likes of Malcolm and Joseph could be responsible for the existence of Tommy and Iris. The two of them were as opposed to their father's ways as anyone could ever be. Neither one of them was particularly keen on discussing the past and the road that had taken them to where they were today, but Moira knew enough to see the broad strokes of it. On one side, there were the Merlyns, hiding their inhumanity in plain sight as much as the Queens. But then Malcolm had hidden some truths even from his son, and once Tommy had found them out, once he'd seen who his father truly was, he'd quickly distanced himself from him.

Now, for all the trouble his father had caused, still caused, Tommy Merlyn stood as his opposite, a force for good in Haven… a hero. And then with the Wests, well… it was trouble born out of tragedy, of the death of Joseph's wife some years ago, which had sent the patriarch on a spiral that only took him further and further down, leaving his daughter and son to keep their feet firmly on the ground in whatever way they knew how. For young Wallace it seemed to be that he meant to strike out on his own, to make something of himself, whether or not he knew exactly what that something would turn out to be. And then Iris…

As far as Moira knew, after her father had started pulling away, she'd started closing in, and that had left her brother to go off on his own, something she now regretted. She'd spent a lot of time looking for something to hold her mind, something that would take her away from the very real loss of her mother, and the emotional loss of her father. That something had become computers. She'd always had an affinity for them, and in that period she had taken what she already knew and multiplied it over and over again. When the Queens had met her, they'd recognized this talent in her, but also the heart that was underneath, and for all that she'd become both ally and friend. In her private heart, Moira had to wonder if she hadn't taken both Iris and Tommy into her life as something of a proxy for the son and daughter she'd lost so long ago.

Moira startled at the sound of pounding against a keyboard, and she turned to find Iris with her head bowed in frustration, sitting at the computer. She moved to touch the young woman's shoulder in reassurance, just as they heard the bell from above. Iris looked to her phone, where she could see a feed of the cameras at her door. After a moment, she turned to Moira, telling her it was Robert and that she'd let him in. Thinking little of it, Moira had started thinking of Iris again, of the weight of her father's actions, or Malcolm's, too, and how they might find the pair of them before they could cause any more…

"Moira?" Robert called from the top of the stairs, and she'd looked up just as he started down, just as they came into view.

As with their father, there had been a moment where they all stood immobile, staring at one another. Only as Thea Queen looked to her mother below, to the face staring back at her like she could feel twenty years of grief rolling away, receding and leaving in its place a loving smile, it felt, for the first time, like she could remember… her… She could remember her mother, looking at her with that smile, she remembered… and in the blink of an eye, far as Iris saw, the girl had dashed from the top of the stairs to come and stand before her mother with a smile of her own. And seeing this display, understanding what had motivated it, Moira Queen had let out a laugh and embraced her daughter for the first time since she'd been all of three years old. How much she'd grown… but she was still her girl… Moira cried, holding and holding, processing the fact that she was really here, and she was holding her.

Even as she raised her head and saw that her husband had escorted their son down the steps, she didn't let go. When she did pull away, that she might take in the presence of her beautiful boy, she still held one of her daughter's hands in one of her own. He was taller than her… Of course he would be now, but still to see it, to remember the last time she'd seen him, a twelve-year-old boy, and now stand before a man grown…

"If I had known…" she shook her head, her free hand reaching to hold his face. He'd bowed his head into that hand, and for that moment maybe he, too, thought of the boy he'd been when he'd lost her and Robert. When he hugged her, she began to sob once again. In due time they would have to remember the problems hanging over their heads, but in that moment there was nothing, no one, but her boy and her girl, alive and well.

In time, they had separated the hold, that they might all sit, and breathe, and gather their emotions. Oliver and Thea were introduced to Iris, who was all too happy to release some of the heavy feelings in the air by sharing the story of how she'd had the idea of how to get their mother's message to them.

"In the letters, you mentioned a man, said he was dangerous," Thea started. She still couldn't look at her mother without feeling something of a jolt. "Malcolm Merlyn. Who is he? Why's he so dangerous?" There was hesitation, Moira looking to Robert, to Iris, which left both Oliver and Thea to wonder what this was about. But then there was the bell again.

Iris, startled, had reached for her phone again, to see who was there. She'd frowned, not recognizing the people there, so she'd shown the rest of them.

"They were the ones who took us across the breach," Oliver revealed, seeing Agents Sharpe and Lane. They hesitated for a moment. They'd been wearing their suits, they should put them on again, although it felt just a bit strange to put them on in front of their parents, even if they already knew about what the two of them did back on Main Earth. But then for realizing they'd returned a lot quicker than expected, they knew. Something must have come up. So they suited up.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	3. DAY 006 (vol 2, ch 3)

_Day 6 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 3_

 **Location:**  
 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 _ **(ARGUS designation)**_

There were only so many ways for a child of War Quarter to make it to adulthood with any manner of prospects for their life to have any meaning. They could be a soldier. They could be a rebel. Or they could fight against the resistance. Everyone else was just going to get caught in the middle sooner or later. And she was going to live. Her choice? Down with the resistance. Did they even understand what they would be left with if they kept opposing? They'd have nothing left. At least now they had half a chance. She had three solid meals every day, she was taken care of. When her leg and hand had gotten blown off, they'd given her new ones, nothing cheap either. What else could she want?

And now here she was, with quite the task. It was an honor, pure and simple. They had selected her, and she was not going to disappoint. All she had to do was cross on to this other Earth, and once she was there, well… just keep doing what she did best, yeah?

Finding her way across, that had been easy enough, they'd told her how to do it, where to go… But oh, none of that could have prepared her for what she found when she made it across.

This place… This place was bright, and the air smelled sweet, and there were sounds everywhere, sure, but whereas the incessant sounds of her home were enough to keep someone in a perpetual state of annoyance… the sounds here were almost welcoming, they said… We're just going to live our life, without a care in the world.

It made her jealous. It made her sad. It made her angry. Oh, yeah, it made her really angry. Fought all her life just to survive, and here… here… Well now she just felt like a bit of destruction and fear would be a really good way for them to feel even a little of what she'd been feeling her whole life, no?

X

He had been born in the dark. His father had been born in the dark, and his mother, too. His grandparents, and who knew how many before them. All of them had been born in the dark, and they would die there, too. His grandparents, his mother, his father, his older brother and two older sisters. They had died in the dark. His little brother had been born in the dark, and he was all there was left. Born, died… all of the dark, and just as they should be, as far as his parents would tell him. It was their life, and it was plenty good for them. Why would they go and listen to those lunatics with their stories of other worlds, of skies brighter than the fire who warmed them or the stars that lit their way? No, no they would have no need of those, thank you. The dark was their world, and they were doing very good by it.

Ever since his father had died, all he and his brother had left in the end, he had been thinking about the other worlds. He'd been thinking about them a lot, and what he thought was… Maybe in one of these worlds they wouldn't be alone. Maybe in one of those worlds some of them wouldn't have died. His little brother was all he had left and he was looking sickly. He wouldn't last. Not here, not for long.

He wasn't the only one to see it. The man had seen it. The man had told him how to help his brother. All he had to do was go to the other worlds, and they would look after him, make him better. He had given him everything he would need, and instructions, too. He could save his brother.

His brother was sleeping when they left. He didn't want to cause him any distress. He had taken the care to slip the strange sort of visor over his eyes, same as he had, both of them having been given to him to ease the crossing, or at least to help them cope with what they would find on the other side.

He could not forget what it had been like, that moment, when he had seen the other world for the first time, with his brother asleep in his arms. Seeing people walking by everywhere, with nothing to cover their eyes, he had to wonder. Very carefully, he pulled the visor up and off of his eyes. He immediately slipped them back on. The light… burning at his eyes… How did these people do it? He was promised he would adjust with time, but he wasn't sure. He might have to keep the visors on.

"We made it…" he whispered to his sleeping brother. "We're here." And now he had things to do. He had to hold up his end of the bargain.

X

They had always been the most competitive of their class, from the very beginning. And it wasn't just that they were competitive, no. They were the top students in their year. But of course, being number two wouldn't do, oh no. They had to be first… and the other would just have to contend with that lowly second place. It had taken to their last year, somehow, to realize they were also deeply in love with each other, which was about time, too, after everyone else had already figured it out years ago.

They had both taken it upon themselves to prove the same thing for their final paper. They hadn't done it on purpose, not at all, and once they'd found out they had fervently demanded that the other change her subject, but oh, no, they couldn't possibly. No, they would keep their own topic, thank you, and may the best girl win.

Their topic: the two Earths and the quarters of their own, and how it was that their own was so advanced as opposed to all the rest.

It was common knowledge, that there existed another Earth, and that their own counted multiple versions of itself all sort of superimposed over one another. Some of their people had written many tales of these other places, these quarters, and there had been some attempts to create some kind of business to arrange vacations to these quaint places out of time, whose people would have surely looked upon them as being gifted with some kind of magic, when all it really was that created these things was their vastly superior technology. Alas, all those plans had been shot down by those ARGUS killjoys.

They would have gladly rooted out these so-called agents from the other Earth, if not for the agreement which had been reached, the better to stabilize the relationship between their quarter and the others… which was some fancy way of saying they should not have any interference with them at all.

Despite all this, the two of them, in their (love fueled, imagine that) rivalry, were after something more than tourism, oh yes. They were scholars, absolutely devoted scholars, and they were going to find out why it was they were so removed from all the others. Because really it made no sense, not to them, and thus it shouldn't make sense to anyone else. So what were they going to do? Well clearly the solution was simple, for anyone of a mind such as theirs. What could they write with any amount of veracity of they didn't see the place themselves? They had to go to this other Earth, yes, and as soon as possible. Surely they had plenty at their disposal to open up the way and get there. Except… except killjoy ARGUS, as usual. They made it their business to make sure all of them didn't go off traipsing to the other Earth so easily, and they were very good at it. Of course this also meant that in stopping them from going they were also enabling themselves with the means to do all the crossing they could hope for. Hypocrites…

So now how were they going to get there?

One day, the solution came, in the form of a man. He had the way, and he would give it to them, in exchange for a little mischief on the other side. Bonus? It would really annoy the killjoys...

X

 **BREACH EARTH, HAVEN QUARTER**

 **HOME OF IRIS WEST**

Sitting up in the living room, in what felt like the most awkward of encounters, there sat Robert and Moira Queen on one side, with the somewhat frazzled resident of the 'besieged' house sitting uncomfortably at their side, looking but not looking at the two new arrivals sitting and looking at them. That wasn't what had made the whole thing awkward. Instead, that prize had gone to the two speedsters sitting between them all, in full suit and mask. Robert, Moira, Iris, the Agents Sharpe and Lane… and the Flash and Kid Flash.

"We… know who you are, Mr. Queen, Miss Queen, it's really not necessary," Agent Lane spoke after a beat, putting an end to the 'misery.' They didn't flinch. "You provided ARGUS with your mother's letters in order to be brought here, and they are sitting here…" she gestured to the couple on the opposite couch. Robert and Moira looked to their children with all the detachment of two people determined to hold up the charade if they wanted them to. Iris looked like she wasn't going to have the same luck if they didn't admit to who they were already. Finally, thankfully, the masks had gone down.

"Thank you," said Agent Sharpe, before continuing. "The reason we came back as we did is that we were called back by our team and by ARGUS to address a situation, and we came to the conclusion that we may benefit from your assistance."

"What's the situation?" Oliver asked at once.

"There have always been a number of people across the many quarters of Breach Earth who have found their way to our Earth, some for refuge, others for… let's say unsavory reasons. We have been able, our team and ARGUS jointly, to keep it all relatively under control. However recently there's been an increase in the number of breachers, of troublemakers. We were hoping, with your capabilities, you might… speed up the process of putting a stop to it."

Oliver and Thea looked to one another. Maybe they were made bolder by the reunion with their parents, but in that look it was clear. They were in.

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

He was touted as a miracle baby, all his life. When he wasn't even born yet, still in her belly, his mother had accidentally taken a tumble in the lake across the fence from their house. What she was doing there and why she would stand anywhere near the water especially in her condition, no one knew, and no one seemed to care. All that he knew was that his mother had drowned… and when they'd pulled him from her, he had been alive. He had nearly died on a constant basis for the first few years of his life, had lived in the hospital the whole time, but he had kept on living. And though he would never be called strong, like the rest of them never could either, he somehow managed to live and survive and display something not unlike normal health for any child of Mist.

His father didn't count him a miracle. His father had never gotten over the loss of his wife, and then, to add insult to injury, he was left with a child so much in need of medical attention that just about everything he earned went straight to the hospital. And when he started to get better, rather than show relief, his father had chosen to take his own life instead. After that, he had been taken on by ARGUS to live at their outpost, and when he'd gotten of an age, he'd been given a job. He was thankful. For a time, he was downright proud.

But some people talked too much, and hearing how some of the agents talked it felt more like they pitied him… they laughed at him behind his back.

He wanted to leave. He wanted to… but where would he go? There was nowhere, and the outpost… the outpost was the best protected place there was in the whole quarter. No one was in better health than those who were here. Except there was another place, and he knew all about it. He'd hear the agents talk about it all the time. Their home. Main Earth they called it. It became like something he would dream about, strive for. If he ever got to go…

Some people had approached him before, beyond the gates of the outpost. They would help him get there, and all he had to do was bring water with him. He had always said no. He had never gone near the lake and he never would, not after what had happened to his mother.

But then another opportunity came and this one didn't need him to bring any water. Instead, he had to do very little, really. So he had said yes.

The first time he had stood on Main Earth… the first time he had breathed its air… he thought he would pass out, and not in a bad way. He had gone into a restaurant, ordered food with the money he had received. The waiter had placed a tall glass of clear water in front of him, and he had stared at it… for so long. He had taken a sip, finally. And then he'd gulped it down. And when he was done… the same waiter had refilled it. He had done it again and again until he had to hurry and go relieve himself. This world… he could get used to it.

X

 **THE BREACH SHIP WAVERIDER'S JUMP SHIP**

The Queens – all four of them – along with Iris, had followed the two agents back to their small ship. They were thus met with three more of their team, namely Leonard Snart, Ed Thawne, and Quentin Lance. They also learned the situation had found some developments in the two agents' absence.

As Leonard told it, while they had already been getting increased numbers of crossings, they had been here and there always. But now they were getting waves of them, from any number of quarters from what they could see, because somehow a lot of them had managed to evade identification. But what was for certain was that this had the potential to turn into a crisis, and they absolutely needed the two speedsters if they would help, which they promised at once.

"I can help," Iris spoke up, and the Waverider crew looked at her. "Whatever you're using to track them, I guarantee I can improve on it, just get me where I need to be and I'll do it. I want to help," she went on, sounding much more like what she should have said was that she needed to help. There had been some hesitation.

"She's telling the truth," Moira spoke up. "You would do well to utilize her talents if you want to put a stop to this." The vote of confidence could not have been received with more gratitude. "And I'd like to go as well, we both would," Moira went on, looking to her husband. "For twenty years we thought our children were dead. We've only just gotten them back, all this thanks to you. We would rather not be separated again." Another brief consideration had settled the matter. They were all going. As they boarded the jump ship, Iris had met Mrs. Queen's eye.

She was thinking the same thing, wasn't she? Mr. Merlyn, and her father, the two of them going dark, the two of them planning something. Was this it? Was it related? They had no confirmation, and they might not get one now, but it didn't matter. They had to try.

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

It had been a long time coming. The two of them had been all set to use their key to open the door into this other Earth, but they hadn't gotten the opportunity to use it, not until now. Their most prized possessions were the weapons they carried. Nate had the large, fire breathing thing at his belt, while Raymond had could have blasted an ice sculpture into existence with the one he had gripped in hand. Now that they were here, they weren't just sightseeing; they had a job to do.

They were given an address to head to once they made it on to Main Earth. They found a vehicle and drove to the address, taking in their surroundings. This place didn't look so different from their home, and if they hadn't such a vivid memory of crossing that breach they could have thought this was all a hoax.

They arrived and got out of the car, approaching the building with what could only be the appropriate amount of apprehension. They hadn't made it this far being careless. When a door opened, they stopped, watching as a man stepped out and stopped at the top of the stairs, looking down at them. He said nothing, then turned back and returned inside. Nate and Raymond looked to the other, making a silent decision together, and walked into the house.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow in volume 1)_


	4. DAY 008 (vol 2, ch 4)

_Day 8 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 4_

 **Location:**  
 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 _ **(ARGUS designation)**_

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

The jump ship had landed on the roof, its passengers led into the building by Agents Sharpe and Lane. The ship may have been Leonard Snart's, but when they were at ARGUS, their agents aboard had the power and not him, something he was not too keen on remembering. Still they went onward, the two agents, and Snart, along with Ed Thawne and Quentin Lance, and behind them Oliver and Thea Queen, masked once more as the Flash and Kid Flash – non-negotiable for the time being, among so many people. They were trailed at the back by their parents, and their parents' friend, Iris West.

For how impressive the place could be to anyone who didn't make a habit of walking its halls, the only one of them who really seemed to be running the risk of bumping into something or someone for being too busy looking around her instead of in front of her. If not for Moira Queen leading her along she may well have come away from this day with a few bumps and bruises. All she'd done over the years, all she'd learned and gotten involved in, all of it had been so small compared to this, mostly just her holed up in her house, in her basement. This was like… like… being a Christmas nut all your life and then strolling into Santa's Workshop up in at the North Pole.

If anything would bring her back to focus on the task she'd been brought along to perform, it would be walking into the main hub where the breacher influx was being dealt with. It was chaos, more or less. There were agents everywhere, talking over one another, running this way, running that way… Before she knew it, Iris was ushered into that chaos by Agent Sharpe, leaving the Queens behind just as another agent came toward Snart and Agent Lane, trailing a blonde in a suit that marked her instantly for being… well, not an ARGUS agent was all they could guess as of yet. It had a cape, flowing down her back.

"Could we borrow them for a minute?" the agent asked her colleague, indicating the four Queens.

"You can have these two," Lucy replied, indicating the parents. "We'll be sending out the speedsters as soon as we get an update." There had been a brief hesitation over separating, much as they had known it would be necessary, but finally they'd gone, the two masked speedsters following the Waverider team and leaving behind the agent and her caped friend behind with looks of curiosity.

"Mr. & Mrs. Queen?" the agent asked, and they nodded. "Dinah Drake," she introduced herself, shaking their hands. "We need to discuss a man who goes by the name of Malcolm Merlyn." The response was one of instantaneous dread, to have his name come up here, far from Haven, on a whole other Earth.

"What about him?" Moira asked. Agent Drake turned to the woman who'd so far stood silently behind her, and she now stepped forward. She introduced herself as Felicity Smoak, though here she was also known as Supergirl, and though neither of those had been her name when she'd first come to Earth, much as they had.

"My team and I were sent here many years ago to apprehend and return a fugitive, but our ship was caught in stasis for a long time, and once we finally arrived on Earth, our target had disappeared. We learned he had been going by the name of Malcolm Merlyn. Until we saw your letters, we had no trace of him." Robert and Moira looked to one another, a silent exchange between them before they turned back to the two women.

"We have reason to believe all of this, the breachers, has something to do with him, and another man. Little more than suspicions as of yet, but it's best you know."

Felicity received this news with something between relief and dread. After all this time, they might be able to get their hands on him… but then if he was really behind this situation, then… what was it all leading to?

X

Agent Lane hadn't been kidding when she'd said they wanted to get the two of them out there as soon as possible. They had not been back from Haven and on to Main Earth for more than a half hour that the Flash and Kid Flash were already speeding through the city. Taking their lead from where ARGUS wanted them, they were bound for one location, which now seemed to be spilling out breachers to the rhythm one or two or three or more every five minutes or less, like they were lined up back wherever they were emerging from, waiting for their turn to go. And once they came through, they were as good as gone the moment their feet hit the ground.

As important as this one point was as far as putting a stop to whatever was enabling the breachers, and as much as the two of them would head there at once, it was impossible not to see some of the rest of it as they ran past. Most anyone, if they didn't know about what was happening around the city, would not realize if a breacher walked by them on the street, unless they did anything particularly noticeable. But for Oliver and Thea, it felt downright glaring. It seemed like they were at every turn, wherever they looked… They couldn't stop for them. The best they could do was to report them back to ARGUS, who would probably be scrambling to keep up.

"There's too many…" Thea told her brother, running alongside him. "Even if ARGUS sends out every last agent it's got."

"Then they'll just need to get more," he replied, and she knew what he meant. They'd need to bring in outside help… like they'd done with the two of them and Iris. He had a good idea of where to start, but first they'd need to turn off their comms with ARGUS.

X

 **CLOCK TOWER – BASE OF THE GREEN ARROW**

Her task had been accomplished the moment she'd put that envelope in Oliver Queen's hands not one day ago, but she hadn't been able to shake the feeling like there would be more to this, and she'd been sitting almost in vigil, looking over the city and… waiting. This had not gone unnoticed by the rest of the team.

"Has she moved yet?" Sin asked Michael as she came bounding back up the steps, having gone to get them all lunch. She placed one of the bags at the table where Michael Rory was busy cleaning his weapon, at which point he finally answered her question.

"No," he frowned, not looking up, until he sensed another presence and turned his head to find Sin hadn't come alone. Following behind her and carrying the cardboard tray holding four drink cups, stood Cisco Ramon, their occasional fourth and newly minted Arsenal. He took one of the cups and placed it next to the bag on Michael's table.

"Figured we might need him," Sin answered the unasked question. "You know, for whenever she does move," she moved to place another bag next to Sara at her observation post, before reaching in the tray and retrieving the second cup and setting it down.

"Oh, sure, take my job," Cisco shook his head, only halfway joking.

" _Your job_ hasn't started yet," Sin assured him, giving him his bag and taking her drink in one simultaneous exchange before moving to sit at Sara's side, joining her in her search, or… whatever they might call this. It wasn't as though she could expect to find whatever she was looking for by staring real hard, could she?

When Sara's phone rang, she did move, standing up and pulling the phone from her pocket.

"Yes?" she answered.

"I don't specifically know if the number you gave me was your own or for… business," a man's voice spoke, and she closed her eyes. She'd just known, hadn't she?

"Just say Sara. What can I do for you?"

"Right, no time for more details than this," Oliver told her. "A mass series of crossings happening all over the city, breachers from many quarters, all coming along, talking easily over a hundred, and where the two of us are headed, more are coming every few minutes. ARGUS doesn't know I'm calling. They'll be overwhelmed, we need more people. You have a team?"

"Tell us where to go," Sara told him at once, and already the others were moving to get ready.

X

 **BREACH EARTH, HAVEN QUARTER**

 **HOME OF TOMMY MERLYN**

On any given day, he did well enough to live his life without constantly thinking about or being reminded of who his father was underneath the image he presented to the world around them. It helped that he and his father didn't exactly speak all that much these days… not at all, sometimes, and those were the days he wanted. His father knew as much, and still sometimes he would pop up out of nowhere to try and pull him into whatever he was up to nowadays, whether it was 'on the up and up' or not, even if he could have guessed the answer would be no before he so much as opened his mouth.

But today was not one of those days where his father came around. No, instead, the one who came and rang his doorbell was a woman. She introduced herself as Lyla Michaels, said she was a CSI. He had the time to wonder if this _did_ involve something his father might have done after all, and then the woman had added how she also worked with ARGUS. This was definitely about his father.

He had let her into his home, rather than let her stand there and get the attention of whatever neighbor felt most prone to look in on him. The woman had reached to her ear, pulling a blinking earbud and handing it over to him.

"Someone needs to talk to you," Lyla told him, and he frowned, unable to deny some curiosity as he stuck the bud in his ear.

"Hello?" he shrugged.

"Tommy, it's me," a girl's voice replied, and he startled.

"Iris?" As friendship stories went, 'we became best friends because both our dads are kind of evil and neither one of us wants anything to do with them' wasn't exactly the kind they'd toss around. "Where are you?" he asked, looking at this woman, tied to ARGUS… and Iris?

"Well…" Iris started, her voice pitching in the way it did when an answer far outweighed the possibility of being simple and expressed in a handful of words. The fact that she didn't even try, not right away, also told him she was doing something else even as she spoke to him. "They've gone to ground, Tommy. They're doing something, I know it." His dad… her dad… He let out a breath. "I'm on the other Earth, at ARGUS. Go with Lyla, she'll get you here."

"To the other Earth?" he repeated, turning to look at the woman who had not moved from her spot even as he paced to and fro, listening to his friend.

"Whatever this is, I'll feel a lot better knowing you're out here and not back there. Bonus, you get to help us send some breachers back before they cause too much trouble. Just grab your gear and go with Lyla. We need Guardian."

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

 **HOME OF CAIT SNOW AND RONNIE RAYMOND**

"There's something going on," had been Ronnie's greeting to her as she'd returned home. She froze there, looking back at him.

"What?" Cait asked, hesitating. He turned to her and she saw he was holding his phone.

"Barry's not picking up, or Eobard. And I swear I saw both the Waverider and the jump ship in the sky a few times before," he explained, and she breathed, setting her bag down.

"Slow day, is it?" she asked, of all these 'clues' he'd been able to gather already.

"I will bet you," he declared. "I will bet…" his words trailed off, trying to decide on what he might agree to wager. The longer it took, the more she just had to keep on staring at him, knowing it would only make it harder for him to come up with something. "Look, humor me, alright?"

He'd called Amaya, the last of their team he'd yet to reach out to. When she'd answered, Cait didn't know if he was relieved or disappointed, like her not picking up would have meant something they needed to investigate along with the rest. She had agreed to meet them at Barry's house. Either he'd be there, or they could manage to figure out where he'd gotten off to from there.

Amaya had arrived before they did, though when they came to join her, they found she wasn't alone. There stood a man with her, a bow and quiver at his back, his hair pulled into a short knot. Without having met him before, Cait knew who this must be. The Green Arrow's newest team member… Arsenal, if she recalled it right, although right now there was no mask over his eyes, which only made his presence more curious.

"Hey there," he greeted them as they approached. "As I was saying, my name is Cisco," his eyes diverted momentarily to Amaya as though this particular piece of information had not been given so gladly, which was in all likelihood the work of her frosty counterpart upon finding him here. "I was sent by the Green Arrow. She needs your help, we all… need your help." He quickly explained, about the breachers, the vastly increased number of them, and the need to stem the flow. "You're a speedster, right?" he pointed to Cait, who gave him a nod after a moment. "Great, we got a few of those already running around at this one breach that's just spewing right now, you could…"

"I can't," she cut him off. Ronnie looked at her, as did Amaya, and their messenger, too. "But I'll do what I can from wherever else you need me," she insisted.

"Excuse us for a second," Ronnie led his wife aside before lowering his voice. "Cait, you've got this. I know it still hasn't been that long since you've been with us in the field, too, but I have every…" Before he could whip up the world's most rousing of encouraging speeches, she'd cut him off and told him precisely why she didn't want to be out there using her speed.

She'd been almost sure, with how she'd been feeling the past few days, but she'd still needed to confirm it before she did anything or told anyone, Ronnie most of all. But now she was sure, and while this wasn't how she had imagined telling him that they were about to become parents, she had to spill the beans, and so she did. To see him take in the news and will himself into reining in his emotions so not to let everyone else know, too, he had pressed his hands to her shoulders, the tremor in them telling her all she needed to know of his giddiness before he'd cleared his throat to show he had it under control. She smirked to herself, and then they returned to Amaya and Cisco.

"Does Snart need a hand? He'll be in on this, right?" he asked Cisco. Amaya didn't say a word, didn't make a sound, but Cait had seen her face and she knew her teammate and friend had understood the nature of her wanting to pull back. Cait said nothing to confirm or deny. What mattered for now was that they were needed somewhere.

"What about your Firestorm buddies?" Cisco asked.

"Yeah, we're having some trouble tracking them down right about now," Ronnie told him. "They'll swoop in soon enough… I hope."

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

Jim Olsen had not set foot anywhere near this place in a long while, not since the day he'd been fired. He might have called it 'unceremonious' if he didn't remember the way everyone had looked at him as he'd been led out of the building. He'd gotten reckless, they'd said. He would get himself killed… like his father before him. They weren't going to let that happen, they'd said. Did they not even understand how much he needed to be there, all his life, ever since his father had died, since he'd found out what he really did for a living? Well, he hadn't stopped, had he? Even if he had to go at it on his own, without the support or the approval of ARGUS. He was looking after his city, and that was what mattered. Wild Dog, they called him. He needed no master.

But he did have friends. Partners, allies, and two of them had followed him that day as he made for his former office. It wasn't moral support, though they might have offered it if he'd needed it. No, they were here for the same reason he was. He'd been called in by Lucy Lane, the Black Canary herself. He would run into her from time to time, a coin toss whether he or she – and her team and their breach ship – would get a hold of whichever breacher they'd both gotten in their sights first. This was the first time she'd asked him to meet her at headquarters… and to bring others like him if he had them, which she had to know he did.

There were seven of them most times. Two of them, Jefferson Jackson and Mike Matthews, were not answering his calls for some reason. Two more, Lisa Snart and Zari Tomaz, were not the fighting type. That left the two now flanking him as they walked into headquarters. To one side, Kendra Saunders, to the other, Samantha Arias. Of the first, nicknamed Artemis, the greatest skill she had to show involved a bow and arrow, although she could more than hold her own in a fight. The same could be said of the second, though if she would ever pick up a nickname she had yet to find it. She didn't exactly lack in skill, and at this point her ability to hold a fight was the least of those skills, which said something. It was a running gag among their group to declare that their Sam was simply terrific…

Maybe terrific was just what they were going to need. Making it through the security checks, they had been led to find Agent Lane, who had made quick work of telling them what was happening around the city. If one thing could be said of Jim and his team, it was that they knew their city very well, and they cared deeply not to see it or its people harmed. All they needed now was to be pointed in some direction and they would get to work.

X

As soon he had landed on to Main Earth with Lyla Michaels, Tommy had insisted on being taken to see his friend. So here they were now, at ARGUS. He had already gotten into his suit, though he carried his helmet under his arm as they went. He found her, it had to be said, in her element. She sat at a computer, fingers flying across the keys as though they needed only the slightest input from her brain to go where they had to go. But then all at once she'd stopped and turned to him, standing and hugging him, reassured.

"We really need to do something about the click in that suit, you're just not subtle at all," was her greeting.

"I'm not going for subtle right now," he promised. "Now where do you need me to go?"

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	5. DAY 010 (vol 2, ch 5)

_Day 10 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 5_

 **Location:**  
 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 _ **(ARGUS designation)**_

It might have been called baptism by chaos. That was more or less how Tommy Merlyn felt, running through this city that resembled his own in so many ways it could have been mistaken for it, knowing explicitly it wasn't his city. Making it even more strange to him was being aware of the fact that, for a while, it _had_ been his city. He had been born here, and it wasn't until his father had done whatever it was he did that he ended up over on Breach Earth, in Haven. Not that his father had told him as much, not that he felt the need to inform him on it. Tommy had essentially slept through the events which came to shape all of their lives, on either side of a breach that had not existed when his life had started. He'd been too young to understand the difference back then, so he'd had no reason to believe or even assume that such a thing was possible. Later he'd learned the truth, learned it for reasons as unfortunate as they'd been startling.

It was the one secret he'd been part of, to know that he and his father were not as human as they might appear. However there was more to it than their identities: there were powers, there was speed, or at least there was supposed to be. His father had it, and _he_ did not. His father had never understood why, all he _had_ understood was that it infuriated him, to know that his son was as regular as any child of this world. Was it some fault in him? Was it that his mother had been human? There was no telling, but either way the damage had been done, hadn't it? And when he'd gotten angry at his son, that was when Tommy had learned the truth about where they were.

He had made this crossing on to Main Earth at the request of his best friend, Iris. In part he had been brought here to keep him safe, but then with the situation at hand as it was, there was no doubt where he would end up and that was right where he was, running along, in his suit, in his helmet, with his shield on his arm.

It might not have been a free for all, but they were about as close to one as they could get without being in one. The breachers were not everywhere, weren't so close in one place that it would be one blanketed presence, and more importantly they weren't identifiable for what they were unless someone knew to look for them. But the rest of them, the ones trying to get to them and figure out what threat they posed, _if_ they posed a threat, all the heroes and the agents… Suits and masks and uniforms… They were noticeable, and the people of the city might have become used to seeing one here or there on a given day, might see a small group of them, sure. But there were so many of them on this day, and as Tommy ran along, he could see them, could see the questions in their eyes. _What's happening right now? Are we in danger?_

"Iris, can you hear me?" he spoke as he went along.

"I hear you," her voice was in his ear.

"Has anyone gotten word out? Maybe get people off the streets?"

"I know, I see them, too," she told him. "I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, you need to take your next right."

He took his next right, and he came upon a cluster of what he recognized – by the masks still dangling around their necks – as Mist breachers. There were three others already on site, attempting to get a handle on the situation, and they were doing alright for themselves, but not so much that an extra ally on their side wouldn't come in handy.

"Mind if I cut in?" he called, alerting them to his presence, when one of the breachers cut past one of those trying to stop them, busy with one another already. Tommy saw him brandishing a sort of flask looking thing, just as the Mist breacher flicked it in his direction. Water spewed from it and Tommy threw up his arm and his shield. If not for that and his suit, he might have been touched by the strange projectile, but it merely rolled off of him. He couldn't say what this alone would have done to him, although he was familiar with the existence of Mist Quarter, and of its water, so he wasn't looking to find out what would happen if it did touch him. What it _did_ do was to make him that much more determined to put a stop to this.

The other three were as aware of what these people were trying to use against them, and they didn't all have the same advantage he did. And then, no matter what, the goal was always to apprehend, not kill, after which they would be ferried back to their quarter, in whatever manner they had at their disposal, whether it was a direct transfer if they had someone on hand to make it happen, and, if they didn't, then they would have to get them to ARGUS, though with the present swelling of their numbers… They'd be getting packed like sardines, and then what?

Finally they had gotten a handle of the five Mist breachers, whatever water remained in their flasks also having been contained. The breachers were led into the trio's vehicle, that they might rendez-vous with the Waverider's jump ship and get these five back where they'd come from. They had let Tommy follow, on a ride mostly silent, save for the breachers looking to their captors like they would have loved nothing more than to spit on them if their hands weren't bound, preventing them from pulling down the masks that had been put back into place over their mouths and noses.

After they'd met with the jump ship and its already tired looking crew presently moving back and forth between the two Earths, playing transport ship without managing to stop, Tommy had ended up still tagging along with the trio as they drove off, keeping an eye out for their next intervention. Now that it was just them, introductions had been made. Tommy nodded as they gave their names. Jim Olsen and Kendra Saunders sat with him in the back, while Samantha Arias was at the wheel. They told him how they were missing some of their usual team at the moment, two in particular out in the field. Tommy had introduced himself in return, noting how he didn't have a team back home, although he'd have his friend in his ear.

"You're from the other Earth," Kendra noted from his mention of 'back home.'

"Haven," he confirmed. There really was no point hiding it. Instead he explained how he had been called in to assist, though he didn't start in on the whole dad trouble. That was not a conversation for first meetings.

"Well you're welcome to stick with us so long as you're here," Jim told him, offering his hand, and Tommy gave it a glad shake.

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

Iris had not forgotten about Tommy's suggestion, though it was hard to find time to step away from what she was trying to get done when it just wouldn't stop. But then… word was coming in of one incident where people had been injured. Not the breachers, and not their people, but just civilians in the vicinity. They weren't killed, and it seemed their injuries would turn out relatively minor, but there was no way they would keep being so lucky. At some point, someone _might_ get killed, and while it might not all be preventable, Iris had to figure at least some kind of intervention would diminish the risk.

"Excuse me?" she called out, seeing the woman who'd brought Tommy from Haven. "Uh… Agent? Detective? I don't…"

"Lyla," the woman gave her a nod.

"Right. I need your help, if you don't mind?" Iris told her, looking briefly to her screen every so often as they spoke.

"I don't mind at all," Lyla insisted, looking more like she invited the chance to do something.

"I realize it might not be any easier for you than for me, seeing as neither of us is from this Earth, but there has to be a way to get word out for people to get to safety."

"Right, absolutely," Lyla tapped her shoulder, moving immediately into action.

She could not help but think about her children, back on Breach Earth. Sara and JJ had already been with their nanny when she'd been called in to find and escort Tommy Merlyn across the breach, and she'd just managed to alert the woman that she would need her to stay with the twins later than usual. She would have to find a way to get them here, too, if she didn't end up returning to Haven soon. There was something about knowing they were out there, and John was out there… and she wasn't. It wasn't as though she believed he would hurt them, because of course he wouldn't. But he didn't know they existed either, did he?

"Hey," she caught an agent on the fly. "Tell me something, if you wanted to get a message out to the city and quick, who would you call?"

X

When they'd first run up to the location of the continually active breach, Oliver and Thea could already count up something like twenty to thirty breachers already crossed, even as another appeared. They weren't trying to disperse all that much, either. Were they waiting for something? Or were they guarding the breach, to ensure more would continue to cross? There was no saying, one way or the other, and for now it couldn't matter. What did matter was that they were here, and they would be able to act when the time came. The breachers were looking at them now, no way to come off as discreet. But they weren't moving to come after them, not yet. Some of them definitely looked like they wanted to give it a go, but they held their ground. It told them more than they had previously known, told them enough to be just that much more concerned than they'd already been. It also gave them time to call in back up, which was what they'd done. To say the wait hadn't been a tense one would have been laughable.

In the minutes that went by before the four of them arrived, just as many more breachers had come along to join the others, which might have funny if it didn't mean they were now six against about thirty, with the constant threat of more hanging over their heads.

They had called a few different people, knowing it was very likely that, while all of them would get out and start helping, not all of them would make it to help them specifically and some of them would divert to whatever situation they might come to cross on the way. But the Green Arrow and her team _did_ reach them, and when they saw what they'd been seeing since they'd arrived, they looked just as concerned as they had done.

"Already put out the call for more backup, but there's no telling how long before they do something, and until then more just keep showing up," Oliver explained to the four. There was the temptation, maybe because they were in a holding pattern for the time being, to turn to Sara and tell her about what had happened after they'd gone their separate ways earlier, but it was hardly the time. Instead, some introductions had been made, although seeing as they were out in the open – and surrounded by an ever-increasing number of rough looking breachers – they stuck to code names for the time being. So the Flash and Kid Flash met Speedy, and Spartan, and Arsenal and vice versa.

"What about the breach?" asked Spartan. "Don't suppose we can lock that door?"

"A scrambler's on the way, but it might not get here in time," Oliver told him. _So in the meantime it's up to us to stop this going sideways._ It wasn't said, but it was implied. And they would do it, of course, even if, for the time being, the holding pattern was still… holding. The best they could do was to take in what they could see, work from what the Flash and Kid Flash had to say of the developments they'd seen since their arrival. It wasn't like the breachers were standing in formation, although sometimes they had to wonder if that might not have made things easier. A disorganized bunch was less predictable, and there were only six of them standing in their way…

"Not to be paranoid or anything, but did that one move?" Arsenal asked, his pointed gaze telling them were to look. If 'that one' _had_ moved, they couldn't say that he was doing it now, which only reinforced their efforts to keep the breachers in their sights, looking for the one that would signal a shift. Oliver and Thea were able to watch them all at a crawl, facial expressions, moving arms, legs, they slowed as the speedsters watched them all.

"What do you think?" Speedy looked to the Green Arrow.

"War Quarter," she spoke confidently. "They're from War Quarter." That had been Oliver and Thea's guess, too. One more troubling bit of information for them. There was no way growing up there wouldn't have left them with a style all their own of defending themselves… and attacking, too. "When they start going…"

"We can destabilize them," Kid Flash assured the four of them, looking to her brother. Well, they could run circles around them, sure, but how long was that going to hold?

Another breacher made it across to join the rest. It really wasn't stopping, was it? As small favors went, at least there weren't any civilians in sight anywhere around them or the group surrounding the point of crossing. No cops either, though most times when breachers were involved they'd leave it to ARGUS to handle it. Right about now, with so many of them standing there, they might have changed their minds and come anyway, but no. The ARGUS agents were scrambling to keep up, but it wasn't going to hold if this kept up, and this point… this one had the potential to turn the tide, for whatever side won out in the end really.

X

 **NORCO BUILDING**

 **OFFICE OF NORA ALLEN**

The city's heroes were out in full force today. From her window, Nora Allen had seen several of them in the last few hours, seen some of them more than once, like whatever they'd been up to that sent them one way was now over and they were headed the other way to see to another thing. She was already keeping her ear to the ground by the time a call was patched through to her from a woman at ARGUS called Lyla Michaels. The request she laid out was a simple one when it came down to it, and Nora had promised that it would be done and quick. She knew that as she went on looking out those windows for a few moments more she was looking for something in particular, someone. Her son… Firestorm.

Oh, he didn't know that she knew it was him, of course. He hadn't told her, went out of his way to separate his life as Barry from the one he spent with his head on fire, but… well, he was her son, of course she'd known it was him after he'd saved her that one time. She'd looked into his face and it was him. She didn't know the circumstances of his transformation, but she could do with that bit of the unknown because she had the rest. She had her son, in her life, as she was in his, something she hadn't had for several regretful years. Her son the hero… Was she scared for him? Yes, deeply… all the time. And at the same time… he confided in her… or Firestorm did. He had taken to visiting her from time to time, all under the cover of his 'secret' identity, and when he did he would tell her things she knew her Barry wouldn't have said.

He was out there, somewhere… doing what he did… Well, she was going to do what she did now, too. They needed to warn the people of the city, all the while not filling them with more fear than they needed to hold on to. If anyone could do it, Nora Allen could. But she might need a hand with this one, and she had a thought of who to call in to help. That young reporter who'd visited her not so long ago… the one who'd come to this Earth from the other, as she had also told her.

"Miss Tomaz, this is Nora Allen. Please, get back to me as soon as you can, it's urgent."

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	6. DAY 012 (vol 2, ch 6)

_Day 12 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 6_

 **Location:**  
 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 _ **(ARGUS designation)**_

 **NORCO BUILDING**  
 **OFFICE OF NORA ALLEN**

Not ten minutes after Nora Allen had called and left her a message, Zari Tomaz was marching into her office, pulling her bag from over her shoulder and dropping it on a couch before turning to the woman and fixing her with a look that said 'I'm ready, what do you need me to do?' as she pushed up her sleeves. Nora's receptionist looked like she'd just gotten spun around at hyper speed like something out of a cartoon; she hadn't so much as gotten to ask what the visitor wanted before she'd cut past and walked into the office. Nora had half a mind to hire the young woman. That kind of attitude about the job, she could get behind that.

"Thank you for coming," Nora told her visitor. "Would I be correct in assuming you're aware of the situation out in the city?"

"I am," Zari nodded. "Some friends of mine are out there right now, trying to help." Her tone said plainly that she would have been out there, too, if she had any skill that would warrant her standing in the way of breachers on the rampage. Thankfully, she did have other skills, and those skills would be utilized here and now.

"I received a call, shortly before I left you that message. ARGUS contacted me, asked me to get word out to the public about staying off the streets until this is dealt with. Obviously this needs to happen, and I have the power to make it happen. But I'm not about to feed them some made up story that won't hold, because I don't believe it would be right if I did that. Would you agree, Miss Tomaz?"

"I really would," Zari nodded.

"Precisely why I called you. Now, you and I are going to sit here until we have something drafted up and set to broadcast. Would you like a coffee? Tea?"

X

 **THE BREACH SHIP WAVERIDER'S JUMP SHIP**

Main to Mist. Mist to Main. Main to War. War to Main. Main to Dark, and then Mist again. And back to Main, and so on, and so forth. They'd been at this, non-stop for more than two hours, though with precious little time to stop and realize this, the whole thing might have been half an hour… like it could have been half a day. Even sailing back toward Main after making a drop off to whichever Quarter's ARGUS outpost they needed to get to at the time, when it would be just the five of them again, they were only seeing that they were loaded up and ready for what they'd find when they made it out of the jump ship once again, and getting directed to somewhere they would be needed, and then they were there. There was no time to stop and breathe.

And that didn't even account for the times they'd landed or been on their way to rendez-vous with some agents or allies waiting for them, only to get diverted when finding some unfolding problem on the way, which would then force them to either make that drop off before swooping in to the call they'd been meant to respond to, or going straight there and having two sets of breachers to get back wherever they belonged, which almost always meant struggles aboard the jump ship and keeping everyone separated in already cramped quarters.

That much happened as the jump ship passed into Main Earth again for the… who knew which time anymore, they'd lost count after seven or eight. They were meant to head off and join the two Queen speedsters at this very moment, but as they set a course to go and meet them and help them, word had gone out that a few metas out of War had been spotted coming through another breach. They knew all of this because the Waverider team had already taken them on the last time they'd attempted a crossing… and the time before that, too… and taken them back to where they'd come from. They might have kept to their course to join the Queens, left these metas to some other agents, but then they knew those metas, had dealt with them before, which might speed up the process of stopping them and taking them back to War before they had the chance to do anything. On top of that, as Agent Sharpe pointed out:

"We might have half a shot at getting them to tell us what the hell is going on."

So they'd veered off course and gone after the metas.

"Quentin, I'm assuming you're still not clocking in?" Leonard called to the first of their two cops aboard. Quentin Lance confirmed with a nod. It would have been easy for him to dip into the power that had earned him the name of Hourman in any number of the cases they'd come across today, but he'd held off, knowing there'd be no going back on it once it ran out for the time being, and he would always say that when the time came he would know. So far, it had not come, so he was solely Detective Lance of the Waverider for now, and once Ava vacated the seat, he'd be the pilot, too, ready to take them away at a moment's notice. Besides, with the breachers they were about to encounter, Leonard had all the confidence that the other three in the jump ship could handle the situation well enough on their own. Three on each side, that'd be fair…

"Oh, let me at them first," Ava asked, seeing their repeaters just ahead. "I still owe them for last time."

"No objections here," Lucy came to stand behind her along with Ed.

"After you, Stargirl," he nodded.

When she had first become part of the Waverider's team, a project she'd been involved with from the start, she had nothing to boast beyond her own training in combat and weapons, as expertly skilled as she was. It had remained this way for over a year, and then, on one travel to Dark Quarter, she'd found gifted with a strange sort of artifact. Though she'd been told it would allow her to wield great power, all it had looked like in the beginning was exactly what it was, a tall staff, curved at the top. It wasn't until she held it, under the great vault of the stars of Dark that she'd felt it. And it wasn't until after they'd returned to Main Earth that she'd started to discover just how great a power it _did_ hold. It was only then that she truly understood the gift she'd been given, and since then she had done everything in her power to make sure she would be worthy of it.

Like Lucy, Ed Thawne had known of his meta abilities before coming aboard the Waverider, and those abilities had mostly been kept a secret from the world at large, something brought to change upon joining Snart's team. But he _had_ already been using it when he'd still only been a cop, even if he'd only do so on his own time. Being an officer had always been something he wanted in his life, and somehow he doubted they would have let him do so if they knew the power he held over shadows. The first one to discover his secret had been his partner, Quentin, and their friendship had been shaped in the time which followed that discovery. Quentin had kept his secret, better yet, he had joined him in his endeavors when they were off the clock. He'd given him his codename, too… He'd called him Obsidian.

The whole thing had taken no more than two minutes, something they had been all too pleased to remind the trio of breachers as they were seated aboard the jump ship, dampeners preventing them from going in for seconds. The picture of humility on most days, Ava had to say she felt no shame in saying she would hold on to this take down for a long time. When they'd seen her standing there, staff in hand, they'd chuckled, amused at the prospect of getting another go at her. That chuckle had died in their throats so quick, it was a wonder they hadn't choked on it. Both Lucy and Ed had stood at the ready, waiting for their moment to jump in for the assist… It had not been necessary. The most they'd done was to break out the dampening cuffs and pull the trio on to the ship.

"Who sent you here?" Leonard asked the trio, sobered and bruised as Quentin took them off for the breach. They were not taking any chances with them, even with the swift takedown, wouldn't leave them aboard while they went to help the Queens. They didn't speak. "Nothing? Really? What's the matter, fellas, tongues get bruised like your egos?" he went on, getting a smirk out of Agent Sharpe. "You're going back… again… You really have nothing to lose, although we'd be happy to tell everyone how you got taken down this time. I am getting the sense that's something that's really giving you trouble, isn't it?"

The three breachers had shared looks amongst themselves, like they might be considering breaking their silence, but in the end they chose not to. What implications there might have been over this choice, they could hardly say, though finding it was enough to hold their loyalty to whoever had sent them…

With the breachers left in the hands of their quarter's ARGUS agents, it was high time for them to get back on the jump ship and get back to assist the Queens. It was as they made it back across the breach that they picked up on a transmission going wide across the city… from NorCo.

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

The recording had been sent to Iris West back at ARGUS as soon as it was ready, after which she'd taken care to get it out for everyone to see. Lyla had been the one to select Nora Allen as the voice and the face of this warning to the city, and they'd only had to run the name by a few people who actually _were_ from here unlike the two of them, who knew who Nora Allen was at once, to know it had been the right choice. They would hear her out… hopefully. Soon, it would be everywhere.

 _"… if you've some of the women and men who seek to protect our city every day, alongside our brave officers of the police department, coming out in force today, then you may already be aware of a crisis unfolding. I'm coming to you now to ensure that all of you out in the city at this time will remain safe, in fact I was called to do just that, by the agents of ARGUS._

 _"Many of you will have some idea of what's happening in our streets today, while others won't. It has been an unspoken truth, one way or the other, that another version of our Earth exists, very close to our own. Over the years, many of its citizens have found their way across the breach that separates the two. Some came seeking refuge, others did not. In this time, it has been thanks to the efforts of ARGUS and of our city's heroes that these breachers have been dealt with as the case should require._

 _"But today is a different matter. The number of arrivals has increased exponentially, and as it continues to rise, so does the risk to the safety of bystanders. It is everyone's best interest to stay home if they can, to stay off the street otherwise. Do not get involved if your safety or those around you isn't threatened…"_

It could have been more polished, as the two women up in the NorCo building would have explained, but it got the main points across that needed to be told, and as the need to get the message out didn't diminish in its urgency, it simply would have to do. At the very least, they'd gotten to tell the city why they needed to keep away. There'd be time enough when this was all over to decide whether or not everything had needed to be told that had been told.

X

The look in their eyes was the most unnerving part. As Oliver and Thea, and Sara and Sin and Michael and Cisco kept up the standstill with the growing number of breachers amassed near the point from which they'd all been emerging, they had nothing else to do _but_ to look at all those men and women. They weren't moving yet, not toward them, not away from them. They stood, and they waited, and they looked… They were looking at the six of them with the glimmer of knowing something that the rest of them didn't know, something they'd _want_ to know but wouldn't be told, because, well, that'd spoil all the fun, wouldn't it? If that wasn't a provocation, just baiting one of them to be dumb enough to come charging, they didn't know what would be.

And though it wouldn't work… it was almost working, on a few of them. The best they could do to contend themselves was to work out which ones they'd go for when they _did_ go charging in. And that _was_ fun. Soon they'd be the ones smirking to themselves, and, seeing the sliver of a doubt slipping into the breachers' confidence… that would be the cherry on top.

"Heads up," Iris' voice was in their ears. "The jump ship was held up on its way to you, they're coming, just… hang in there."

"Sure… yeah… no problem," Thea frowned, eyes continuing to flit about, watching the breachers. "I don't know what else I was going to do, but now that you mention it…"

"Let's just… stay focused," Oliver cautioned his sister.

There'd be no waiting once whatever the breachers were waiting on came to pass and they all left their vigil. Whether or not the jump ship or anyone else would have showed up by then, they'd have to start fighting back.

"Also," Iris was heard again a few seconds later, "It may not be the jump ship, but got another group coming up to meet up with you, driving up now." Even as she said this, they could hear the vehicle pull to a stop, doors opening, feet on the ground, and then there were four more of them standing on their side.

Introductions had been required. Though they'd initially seen the four of them as having been a team, it was quickly revealed that while three of them _were_ a team, or part of one at least, while the last of them had been called over from Breach Earth to lend a hand. Though they had not previously met, there was enough of a notoriety that they knew of one another by stories heard in passing. The Flash and Kid Flash… Green Arrow, Speedy, Spartan, and Arsenal… and now Wild Dog, Artemis, and… well, the last of their trio seemed to be between names, but she waved and said hello. Then there was the breacher. He'd come to a stop standing next to the two speedsters and, while he introduced himself as Guardian, this wasn't the part that claimed their attention.

"Still can't believe I'm meeting the two of you," he'd said, which had been puzzling until he'd gone on and told them how he knew their parents.

"You do?" Thea blinked. "How?"

"I'm sure it would pass the time until… all of that… gets started," he gestured to the mass of breachers, "But I think we might need to call it an IOU until later."

"Okay, that one definitely moved now," Arsenal insisted. "Right there, with the ripped pant leg," he tried to show without pointing, like that would only incite them to do anything.

"That's the wind," Speedy argued.

"Can the wind move a _foot?_ "

"Don't you ever get cramps standing around, guy probably has ants in his leg."

"Not letting him out of my sight," Arsenal insisted.

Then they all heard a whistle from behind them, and somehow he knew it was her before the roar of a motorcycle brought her to swerve to a stop in front of the ten of them. She had previously fought alongside the Green Arrow, alongside the team as a whole, really, Arsenal included now. A daughter of the League of Assassins she was, whatever her true name was they didn't know, but to them she was known as Cynthia. There was a case slung over her shoulder that didn't look as though it would have been hers…

"I believe you were looking for one of these?" she asked, getting off the bike and handing the case over to Sara before turning her head to look at the barrage of breachers. She made a low noise like she had appraised the gathered mass of them and given it little in the way of threat.

"Scrambler?" Oliver guessed. "How'd you get it?"

"Yes," Cynthia answered the first question but ignored the second. "Now how do you expect to activate it? From what I've heard, you'll need to be much closer than this."

"Probably why they're all stood there," Speedy nodded to the breachers.

"Give it to me," Thea offered. "I can get it out there before they can stop me."

"Not yet," Oliver shook his head.

"No, but soon…" Sara balanced from one foot to the other, looking like she was about to run, and for good reason, too. The breachers were starting to move. Some ran away. Some ran toward them. "ARGUS, where's that jump ship?"

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	7. DAY 014 (vol 2, ch 7)

_Day 14 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 7_

 **Location:**  
 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 _ **(ARGUS designation)**_

 **NORCO BUILDING**  
 **OFFICE OF NORA ALLEN**

It felt just a little bit like they were waiting to see if ARGUS would come storming in to take her down. Nora doubted this would be the case, even if she didn't see their having wanted her to explain about the exact nature of the threat in her message to the city. Whatever happened, it was done, and from what they had been told it seemed to working. Civilians were moving to safety, and that… that was good to hear. If it could have quelled her worries over her son being out there as well…

She was standing at the window again, looking on to the city. Miss Tomaz remained at her side, like the two of them were still waiting to see what would happen next. She had known the young woman for a few months now, since the day she'd walked into her office and told her she was from another Earth. Now it wasn't as though Nora Allen had never heard these stories of 'breachers' and where they came from, but honestly she had never really believed too much of it, which might have been strange, coming from someone so involved in the world of heroes and villains, metahumans and aliens, whose own son could turn into a flying man with his head and hands on fire.

Then she'd met Zari Tomaz, and she'd heard her story, about growing up in what they called War Quarter, and by the end of it there was no question to it. Breach Earth was very real, and plenty of its people existed in parts of it they would give anything to escape, even if it meant having to lie and hide your way into a new life here on this Earth. Poisoned skies, constant war, eternal night… eternal day… The girl from War had shared a lot that day, some things Nora sensed she might not have shared with others in the past, that she shared now only for knowing how it might help and get her point across.

She wanted to help others like her, help them more than they were presently being helped. Why she'd come to her of all people in order to get it all started, besides the reach she had over the city – as they'd seen today – Nora hadn't entirely known at first, but then in time maybe it did make sense. She'd been pulled into the middle of this world, without really trying, and by now she had something of an influence over them, the heroes. Maybe it could all lead to more.

"I should go," Zari finally told her. "I need to find my friends."

"When this is all over, I think the two of us need to see about using all this as a starting point. Bring about a little change," Nora told her. Zari smiled, nodding, before heading out of NorCo.

X

Agent Dinah Drake had just handed over two more breachers to a retrieval team, after she and Supergirl had found them in the process of attempting to break into a car. They might have been little more than a couple of hapless car thieves, if not for the telltale sensitivity to the sun of breachers out of Dark. It had barely been enough to dignify calling it a fight, and then they were waiting on the van. Now that it was just the two of them, now that Agent Drake and Supergirl could try and be Dinah and Felicity for a minute, Dinah had turned to the blonde.

"I know you want to be looking for him right now." Felicity looked up to her.

"I do, but I… It's fine. This is more important," she nodded.

"Equally," Dinah shrugged, managing to get a smile out of her.

"I've always known he was out there, he had to be," Felicity sighed. "But there was nothing to find, not once. And now… Now there's more, there's… so much more. It makes me think that I might finally get to go home," she bowed her head. Dinah didn't know how to respond to this. She would want nothing more for her than to finally get to go and see what had become of her world. She knew how much it meant to her. They hadn't gone, they couldn't. It had been so many years, because of the stasis, and… they didn't have their fugitive.

But she also didn't want her to just leave forever. There was no need to say a word of it and yet it was the truth: if she left, she would be losing a sister. That's who Felicity had become for her, and if she hadn't, Dinah doubted she would have been as willing to let her go as she was dreading the day would ever come.

"Agent Drake, Supergirl?" a voice came into their ears just then. Since they'd headed into the field, that voice had belonged to Iris West, the girl out of Haven Quarter who'd crossed to their Earth with Robert and Moira Queen, who had somehow found herself calling the shots and calling them well. But this was someone else, someone they didn't know.

"Who's this?" Dinah asked.

"You don't know me, my name is Cait Snow, I'm a meta, I'm part of a team of metas, here in the city. Part of my team is out there now, dealing with the breachers, and I… I can't be. There's only two of them now, so, if you could… Please help them?"

X

Ronnie couldn't keep from thinking about what his wife had told him. It was so much so that he was afraid his limbs might start stretching and stretching, for the sheer exuberance of his heart in that moment. They were having a baby… They were having a child together… No matter how he said it in his head, it never got any less wonderful, any less odd and thrilling. He had all this energy coursing through him, and while he would have loved nothing more than to spend that energy in any other way than to wrangle unexplainable numbers of breachers now landing on their Earth, this was just going to have to do.

Cait had gone to ARGUS. She would have been there with them, with Amaya and him, if not for this revelation. But instead she would be back as she had been when their little team had come together, them, and Amaya, and Barry and Eobard. She would be in their ears, she would be helping them from somewhere other than where the action was, something he knew deep down she found to be more her speed… She always shook her head when he made that joke, but he couldn't help it. Having a speedster for a wife opened up so many word play opportunities.

So no Cait, no Barry and Eobard, just him and the frost queen. He hadn't even noticed the moment when Amaya Jiwe had ceded her hold over her own form, in favor of the one within, to let Killer Frost emerge, but now here she was, and here she had been. They'd already had one face off, and he could just see the face of the agent who'd be coming along to pick up the breachers and suddenly find himself or herself having to figure out how to move a giant block of ice holding the breachers on the inside like a frozen surprise.

"Listen, you can start picking baby names later," Killer Frost told him, and the cold burst at his side made him startle. "Either you're here or you're not."

Was he here? He just hadn't had time to process it, really, to get it out of his system. His brain was still going on full tilt, which he realized wasn't the way to go if they were going to get through this in one piece, but then what was he supposed to do?

"Right, you're absolutely right. Just give me a minute, I'll be good," he promised.

His minute wasn't up when something dropped out of the sky and landed in front of them, and it startled him again, making Killer Frost glare at him.

The something was two somethings, two women, one of them having been carried by the other as she flew. They didn't know the one who'd been carried, didn't know the one who'd flown either, at least not personally. They _had_ seen her, of course, in the sky, in the papers and on television.

"Supergirl…" Ronnie blinked, surprised. "What are you…"

"I sent them to you," he heard Cait's voice in his ear. "Thought you could do with some backup, being down sixty percent our usual strength."

"Check your numbers again," Killer Frost argued against that.

"Agent Drake, ARGUS," the new woman had introduced herself.

"Heads up," came Iris' voice again. "Couple of breachers headed your way, Future Quarter."

"That's a thing?" Killer Frost asked.

"Time displaced, yes," Agent Drake confirmed, as the four of them made to intercept. "Don't believe everything you see."

They came across the breachers in question, two girls who looked like they could still have been in school. When the girls saw them standing there, they looked sort of intrigued, like they would have loved nothing more than to get to find out who they were, what they were, and everything in between. They also looked like they'd almost someone would come along, and now that someone had… they ran the other way, with such a smirk that said 'catch me if you can.' And then they disappeared.

"Like that?" Ronnie guessed. Another gust of cold cut past him, and a moment later caught the fleeing invisible girls in its grasp.

"Exactly, yes," Dinah breathed out.

"Sixty percent down, you said?" Killer Frost threw them a grin. "I could do this all day."

X

When the wall of breachers had started to move, there'd been little for the group on the opposite end of the stand off to do but to start moving, too, even if there were only eleven of them, running into what had to be over forty breachers, both running to them and away from them. They had to get them all. They also had to get that scrambler in place… scrambling.

"Who's going after the runners?" the Green Arrow shouted.

"On it!" the Flash had sped off, Kid Flash right behind him, while 'Cynthia' and her motorcycle joined them, right after tossing the scrambler to Arsenal.

"Someone else will have to set the scrambler," Wild Dog looked to the case as they kept on running.

"I can do it, clear me a path," Samantha called to him, and Arsenal tossed her the case. She caught it, tucking it under her arm like a football.

"Stay with me, I've got you," Artemis gave her teammate a nod, and off they went. In a moment, Wild Dog ran after to cover her, too.

Right then, a powerful gust of wind overhead heralded the arrival of the jump ship, and in the surprise of the ship flying over their heads, the breachers had been distracted just long enough that the Green Arrow and her team were able to surprise a few of them and take them down, though it would only work so long. Luckily, the ship was good for more than air shows. It landed somewhere about where they'd all been standing, waiting for the breachers to move, and soon unloaded its passengers, presently Leonard Snart, Lucy Lane, Ava Sharpe, Ed Thawne, and Quentin Lance, or for the time of this encounter, Leonard Snart, Black Canary, Stargirl, Obsidian, and…

"Hourman, I don't know about you, but this looks as good a time as any, don't you think?" Leonard turned to the man, who confirmed that it was. For the next hour, he would have the power to become more than he was. _Let's hope it's enough._

"Sorry we're late," Stargirl flew right for the heart of the face off, swinging her staff about as she dropped in near the Green Arrow and Speedy.

"Day like this, all that matters is you're here," the Green Arrow called back to her.

Further ahead, those who'd run had soon come to find themselves stalled where they stood. It almost didn't seem fair, letting them think they could run away from a couple of speedsters. Of course, a couple of them did try and scurry off, but then they'd skid to a stop, finding the daughter of the League of Assassins standing in their way, with a sword and a smile.

"How do you wish to do this?" she'd ask them, and there'd be very little in the way of answers.

Getting the scrambler in place was one thing. Getting it set, and activated, and keeping it there once all that had been done… that would be the difficult part, especially as they had to deal with breachers trying to come at them, to make sure they didn't succeed.

Samantha, minding her two partners running alongside her as they fought off anyone in her way but also made sure nothing else could reach her like projectiles or meta powers, would run through the procedure for the activation in her head. She'd never actually done it, hadn't even held a scrambler in her hands before, but she had to trust that she understood their purpose enough that she could do it.

"Here, right here!" she shouted as they came to a spot she knew would be just near enough to the breach that the scrambler would do its work, but far enough that, if something backfired or if more breachers came through while they were doing this, they would be out of harm's way.

"Go on, we have you covered!" Kendra told her, an arrow set in her bow, warning off anyone stupid enough to try and approach them, while Wild Dog did the same with the weapon ARGUS had handed him before he headed out. It was the same as he'd had, back when he had still been an agent. The significance was not lost on him. He'd lost it once, he wouldn't lose it again.

Snart was holding back, calling to his team over comms, alerting them to movements from the breachers, seen from his vantage point. In the meantime, the Black Canary and Obsidian would weave in, removing unconscious or downed breachers, cuffing them and bringing them to the jump ship. There'd be no fitting them all in there, and the number of trips back and forth in order to return them all… well that would take so many trips, but what choice did they have. There was no telling how long they'd be without the Waverider. If any of the unconscious looked keen on stirring awake, Leonard was ready with an injector and enough doses to keep them sleeping right back home.

"It's not working!" Samantha shouted, crouched with the open case on the ground in front of her, trying to figure out what she might have done wrong that it wouldn't activate. Was the scrambler faulty, or was she just not…

One breacher had managed to knock Artemis down, and Samantha barely had time to realize it that the breacher was looming over her, reading to get her as far away from getting that scrambler active as she could. Samantha knew, maybe even before the other woman knew, that she wouldn't have time to do anything before she'd be struck, and she braced… only to find the breacher woman tackled away by something speeding by, a red cape fluttering just as fast in its wake. As she turned her head, Samantha saw what had gotten to the breacher, or rather who. _Supergirl._ Looking back, she could see other new people had come, one an ARGUS agent, then a man making great strides on legs that looked ten feet long, and a woman with white hair and icy eyes.

No time to give it much more thought, Samantha hurried back to the case, and now, finally, she figured out what she'd done wrong, and with one final button jammed, she felt a pulse thrum to life, and the scrambler was live. If anyone tried to cross through this opening again, they wouldn't be able to. She was better off not thinking about their finding an alternative for whatever they intended. Instead, she looked around to see how the situation had evolved, while Jim picked up the unconscious Kendra.

"Go, get her out of here," Samantha told him, looking back to Supergirl flying nearby. "I've got backup."

Once the fight had started, it was hard to stop and notice much more than what was right in front of them. Sara, for instance, had been so caught up in the seemingly never-ending approach of more breachers, in knocking them back, that while she knew the jump ship had arrived, that part of its crew was there with them, fighting with them, it had taken several minutes for her to realize that one of them was her father.

She knew he was one of them, of course. That wasn't the issue. No, the issue was that the reverse of that statement couldn't be said. She knew he was one of them, but _he_ didn't know she was the Green Arrow. He knew _of_ the Green Arrow, but he didn't know that she and his younger daughter were one and the same. The reasons for that secret were too complicated to get into on most days, even when she wasn't in the middle of a faceoff like this. She couldn't let it distract her.

There was no need to wonder when the tide had turned, when the twenty of them spread out where they were needed had started to get the better of the breachers. When they knew it had happened, it was like a second wind. And with that wind, in what felt like so little time after all the wait, it was all over. The breachers had been gathered, and cuffed, and they were ready to be transported, soon as transport came. The twenty left standing now looked to one another, friends, strangers… The day wasn't over, but this had been a big win.

TO BE CONTINUED


	8. DAY 016 (vol 2, ch 8)

_Day 16 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 8_

 **Location:**  
 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 _ **(ARGUS designation)**_

They had made the crossing and gone right into doing the job they'd been recruited to do. It was not what they had been in the habit of doing, not really, but then it did put the keys to the whole of Main and Breach Earth into their hands, so what were a couple of guys out of Haven going to do? Once they knew what was expected of them, they had set off, Raymond Palmer with his cold gun, Nate Heywood with his heat gun, and the small device that allowed them to jump the breaches. And they did, again and again, in the hours following their arrival. Reconnaissance, little more, but an eye opener if there ever was one.

Now here they were, back on Main, sitting, waiting… eating.

"Well?" Nate asked, as they chewed their way through a couple of burgers. Raymond said nothing for a while, went on chewing.

"Tastes the same to me," he finally declared.

"It's not the same," Nate shook his head, taking another bite. "Just can't decide if it's better or worse."

"Because they're the same," Raymond reiterated. Nate didn't try it again, and so they kept eating.

In times like these they could still have been those boys they'd been when they'd first met. He was still the boy stuck in his room, on the inside looking out on a world that was supposed to be too dangerous for him because if he started to bleed he might be in trouble. And Raymond was the boy who'd broken his window – accidentally – testing out a slingshot he had built, who for some time had been his only ally in bringing the world beyond his reach into his grasp. He had been his first real friend, true friend, and he remained that.

Oh they had ventured far beyond the world of those two boys on their way to the men they became. They had 'ventured' their way right to jail and back, they had. And thanks to some astounding ingenuity from the former builder of slingshots, they had evolved right into the heat and cold guns. Now they were traveling across Earths, and quarters… How wide the world had gotten since that childhood room…

"How long do you think it'll take those girls to come and try to bump us off the job?" Raymond asked. Nate chuckled.

The girls. Mirror Mistress, Top, Livewire. It made sense, sure, doubling up on the effort. They saw no problem so long as everyone stuck to their lane, but that didn't seem to be a sentiment the trio of them shared. They'd been looking at the two of them like their presence was an insult ever since they'd been welcomed by the one who'd brought them all into this, Vandal Savage.

"Let them try," Nate finally pronounced, and that was that. Sure those three were all metas, and they had impressive powers under their belts, against them and their guns, which had to make it look to them like they would be easy to take down. Letting them keep thinking it, in the end, would prove who was right when they did try and 'bump them.' "In the meantime… We have a job to do."

X

Leaving Nora Allen's office, no matter how many times she'd done it by now, never failed to make Zari Tomaz nervous. The first time she'd come here, after going back to her office and then home again to change for a date (which never happened, not after the third time she hadn't made it to the date itself), she had been attacked. She had been attacked by a breacher from her native War Quarter, who had been following her since she'd left NorCo. Sure, in hindsight, it had all been a coincidence, but since then she had never been able to come to this building without thinking about that day. It always made her tense. It always made her get on her guard.

Which today was a good thing, because she was being followed.

She wasn't imagining it, not today. In the beginning, she'd had some jumpy reactions to leaving this building, to the point where she would get a friend to come and pick her up. Only today, today most of her friends were busy. Mike and Jax had been recruited into some situation on Breach Earth. Jim, Kendra and Samantha were out there, dealing with the influx of breaches. That left her, and one more. She pulled out her phone and dialled. When the voicemail clicked on, she sighed.

 _"Hey, it's me, leave a message!"_ Lisa Snart's voice announced in her ear. At the beep, she hurried to speak, voice low. She wasn't sure exactly how close her follower or followers was/were.

"Lisa, it's Zari. I'm leaving from NorCo right now, and I'm being followed. I'll try to go to your place, but if I don't get there soon…" she took a breath, willing herself to take a look over her shoulder as though she was just taking a look at her surroundings instead of trying to get a look at who was following her.

There was no one.

She frowned. Was she just losing it? She'd been sure, she… No, there. _Them_. She saw them now. She made herself look forward again, started to walk, her legs feeling cramped against her efforts to hurry without looking like she meant to run. They'd seen her, hadn't they? They had to have seen her.

"There's two of them. One's about 6'2", maybe more, dark brown hair, other one's just a bit shorter, hair's lighter. Clean shaven. Casual dress. Bulky weapons. I have to go. Please, call back if you get this, okay?"

She hung up. She _made_ herself hang up, knowing she needed all her focus, and she would just give herself away like this. The phone went back into her pocket, and she kept walking, heart ramming in her chest, throat dry. She should have said more, given more details. She could have snuck a picture, sent it to Lisa. Could she still do that? _Why is there no one else around?_ She had thought this and immediately wanted to smack herself. Of course there was no one, the whole point of her being at NorCo had been so that they could tell people to stay off the streets, in case any breachers…

"Afternoon, Miss Tomaz." She jumped, stopping right in front of the taller one who had somehow gotten ahead of her. She was struggling to breathe, to calm her heart. He knew her name. _He knew her name._

"What do you want?" she asked, fighting against the urge to look around for the other one. She needed to be able to see them both and she couldn't do that without letting the first one out of sight. Taller One shrugged.

"What _do_ I want?" he asked; he wasn't talking to her, and now she knew the other one was behind her.

"You just had a burger, how about ice cream?" Shorter One shrugged, which sounded like some kind of inside joke between them. She didn't care to find out what the joke was. She had to get away, and she had a feeling she'd only get one shot at this.

"Where are you two from? What quarter?"

"That obvious, is it?" Taller asked. "Haven, that's what they call it."

"Nice," she breathed. "Peaceful. I'm from War."

Zari shoved low, kicked back, and then she was running. Oh how she could run. She'd run all the way to Lisa's house if she had to. She wasn't stopping, wasn't slowing down…

Of all the things to trip her up, it was the sight of the Waverider's jump ship swooping overhead. She thought about Lisa's brother, who might have been on there. And then she felt fire flare off her shoulder and she dropped with a cry, right before Taller was there, scooping her up and holding her very tight until she couldn't breathe, and then she passed out.

X

Wallace West had walked all around the room five times, six, eight… fifteen… He'd lost count now. He had dragged his hands against the walls, looking for some sort of door, even though it wasn't so dark that he couldn't have seen a door if a door existed. There was no door, not visible or hidden, not as far as he could see. The walls were as solid as could be, weren't going to submit to him even if he tried to kick or punch a hole through them. No chance that he could have had some kind of powers?

The windows were still too far, and he couldn't have climbed to them even if he tried, so he wasn't going to tire himself out over that. There was nothing in the room with him to climb with, or to throw and break a window, and even if there was, he was still too far, wasn't he?

There was no getting out. He was alone. He'd tried to shout, to get his captors' attention, maybe see how they came into the room… But they didn't come, and he was still alone. With a sigh, he got up and turned to start another circuit of the room, because why not?

There was someone else. There was someone lying on the ground on the other side of the room, a girl, unconscious.

Wallace looked around, quickly. How had he missed them bringing her in? He hadn't heard a thing and then she was there. Still no door, just the girl… and a first aid kit next to her. He hurried over to her, crouching to get a look at her.

"Hey…" he spoke, reaching to shake her shoulder and not seeing the injury there until the touch to it jolted the girl awake. She saw him there and she gasped, backing away, wide-eyed. "It's okay, it's okay," he told her, holding his hands up in plain view. "Well, not okay, I mean… Some people took me, and now looks like they took you, too. And you're hurt, can I look?" he pointed with one hand, left the other in view.

The girl looked at him, looked around the room, down at her arm, then the box next to her. She looked back to him and then finally nodded. He approached, slowly so not to startle her.

"My name's Wallace, what's yours?"

"Zari," she introduced herself, wincing as he pulled at her sleeve. "Just rip it," she told him, so he did. Her skin was red and angry, like she'd been burned.

"Those three girls do that to you?" he asked, opening the kit and looking at the supplies for a moment before getting to work.

"Two guys," she shook her head.

"Metas?"

"Big guns, one of them shot fire," she pointed to her arm.

"That's new…" was all he could say.

"How long have you been here?" she asked, as he bandaged her shoulder.

"Hours, I think. I have no idea why, I thought it might have been…" he started, but then stopped and shook his head. "But now there's two of us and I don't… I mean, I don't know you."

"And I don't know you. Where are you from, Haven?" she guessed. He looked at her, surprised. "I'm pretty good at guessing," she shrugged. "The guys who took me were from Haven, too." She was trying to tell herself that he was being honest, that he had been taken, too, but she had enough in her to consider he might have been there to get information out of her. But what information? "Tell me about those girls? How'd they get you?"

He told her all he remembered, about going into the elevator, and then it stopping, the lights going. And then the girls. The one with electrical hands, the one could make the world spin, and the other… he hadn't seen her, only heard her, didn't know for sure she was a meta, too, but he had to guess.

"Never met anyone like that," she told him. When he had finished with her arm he closed the kit and stepped away from her, looked around.

"There's no doors," he informed her. She frowned, looked around. That couldn't right, how could there not be any…. Okay, there were no doors.

Careful with her arm, she stood, slowly walking, taking in her surroundings. Wallace told her about everything he'd observed, all he'd tried to do to find a way out. Then he told her how, when they had brought her in, he hadn't been aware. One second he was alone, the next she was there. And seeing how spooked he was about that part, seeing how it didn't trip up any of her alarms for lies, she made the choice to give him some space on the side of trust. He might not have been there to spy on her after all.

"Where were you when it happened?" He pointed. "And I was… here," she pointed. "Then the way in… or out… has to be on this side." She looked around again, and something dawned on her. "The windows go all the way around." He looked. He hadn't noticed. "So maybe the door…" She looked at the ground, the large tiles, then looked back to him. He looked relieved, and a little ashamed at not having thought of it. This was something they could use though, this was good.

"You shouldn't, with your arm. Let me see if I can find the way out. If I don't find it, you can try after. Okay?"

"Go for it," she nodded. They both looked at the ground, the tiles… One had to be the door.

X

Watching the two of them walk around, staring at the floor, it was almost funny. They thought they were so close to a solution. Yes, there were windows all around. But they were too far above for them to realize they weren't actually seeing the sky outside. If they did, they'd be seeing that the sun had set. Sooner or later they would realize the 'sky' wasn't darkening and then they'd know their great discovery had not been that. And after picking to their hearts' content, they would also realize the tiles would not lead them out. They were no less trapped now than they had been minutes ago.

Nate and Raymond watched the two of them in that room. The girl's attempt to fight back had left them with little more than sore spots in the end, although while Raymond had recovered fast enough to chase her down, Nate had felt that anguish in him, thinking she could have made him bleed. He didn't like people touching him. That was why he'd fired off the heat gun, stopping her enough that Raymond would be able to grab her.

Now that she was where she was supposed to be, they knew they needed to get back to the next step of their job. The girl's weren't around, and they could only imagine what they were up to at the moment. So long as they were keeping to themselves, it didn't matter.

X

 **LISA SNART'S APARTMENT**

She was just going to go to ARGUS. After seeing what it was like out there, knowing that half her team was out there, and her brother, too, she couldn't just stay here. She might have been able to help. Leo would have said she was trying to compensate just a bit, because she didn't want people to just see her as the girl who hadn't existed, who'd been conjured out of some incident suffered by her brother, then an only child. An aberration, they would have called her, a made up person. Well, maybe she did want to show them a bit. But this was beside the point.

She was only coming back here first because she'd left her phone when she'd left for her walk. Picking it up, she saw she had a message waiting from Zari. She pulled it up at once and listened. The more she heard, she felt a chill go down her spine. She looked at the time of the call. Half an hour ago… From NorCo, it was no more than ten minutes. She should have been here by now. Quickly, she dialled up Jim Olsen.

"Where are you?" he asked. "Are you safe?"

"I am, but Zari isn't. I think… I know… someone's taken her." There was a pause.

"Meet me at ARGUS HQ."

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow in volume 1)_


	9. DAY 018 (vol 2, ch 9)

_Day 18 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 9_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

When Lisa Snart was allowed into the building, she had only two things on her mind: to see her brother, and to find her team. But as she took in the state of things, it became clear things were all much worse than she'd been able to find until then.

ARGUS headquarters was getting to look more like a triage zone, tending to its hurt. There were still agents out there, along with others, who had continued to work at apprehending and returning the breachers. But then here were the many who had been hurt in the process, who needed patching up – if they were lucky – or more – if they weren't so lucky. There were some dead, she knew that by looking at some of the faces, though they were somewhere else.

"Excuse me," she asked a woman walking by. Her visitor pass identified her as L. Michaels. "I'm looking for some people. Leonard Snart, Jim Olsen, Samantha Arias, Kendra Saunders?" The woman looked at _her_ visitor badge, marking her for L. Snart.

"So you're Leonard's sister? He's mentioned you before," the woman told her. "He's not here right now, went back out there with his team to help get breachers back. The other three, they're through there," she pointed the way. Lisa thanked her and went in the direction she pointed. The rows of cots, people sitting or lying on them, others sitting around them, medics tending to others. She spotted Jim's tall frame and cut through to reach him.

"Jim?" she called. He turned at the sound of his name, as did Samantha, sitting near one of the cots. As she approached, Lisa realized Kendra was lying on that for, awake. "Are you guys alright? What happened?" she asked, eyes moving to Kendra.

"Breacher with one mean tackle," Kendra groaned, like the sound of her own voice made her head hurt. "I'll be fine, just need to rest up a bit, good as new."

"You're not going back out there tonight," Samantha shook her head.

"No argument here," Kendra promised. She wasn't the type to ignore the risks. "Is Zari with you?" she asked, and Lisa turned to Jim.

"I didn't tell them yet," he admitted.

"Tell us what?" Samantha asked, and Jim turned back to her and Kendra, as Lisa pulled out her phone and played back the message for all three to hear.

 _"Lisa, it's Zari. I'm leaving from NorCo right now, and I'm being followed. I'll try to go to your place, but if I don't get there soon…"_

For a few seconds Zari's voice was replaced by ambient sounds, like she was looking at something, or for something, then a gasp and she started again, rushing.

 _"There's two of them. One's about 6'2", maybe more, dark brown hair, other one's just a bit shorter, hair's lighter. Clean shaven. Casual dress. Bulky weapons. I have to go. Please, call back if you get this, okay?"_

When the message was over, Lisa found her own worries expanded over her friends and teammates' faces. There was no need to say that she should have made it there by now, and seeing as she hadn't…

Kendra closed her eyes, Jim paced around like he wanted to hit something, and Samantha looked around. Get her on a computer, she could track her down, couldn't she?

"What do we do?" Lisa asked them. "We have to find her." The 'but' hung in the air, to the tune of everything happening around them. But there's all this, too. _They need all the help they can get._

X

Iris had practically needed to be pried away from her seat to take a break for a few minutes, eat something… She ended up back with Robert and Moira, who had spent the last few hours attempting to detail the encounters they'd had with Malcolm Merlyn over the years since they'd been thrown on to Breach Earth, whatever may be used to help find him. They didn't even know where he lived, which showed how little they'd sought to interact with him in this time. Of course it would have done little now, if he'd gone into hiding. But someone else might have known more, whether he liked it or not.

"Tommy!" Iris had welcomed her friend back as he strode in, helmet in hand. "You okay?" she asked, very aware of all the injured around them.

"All good," he assured her. "I may be speedless but I'm not slow," he pointed out. "Teamed up with a few people out there, before we ended up in that big knockdown. One of them got hurt, should probably check on her."

"I saw them, they're good. You should sit, eat," Iris pointed to the table, the open containers. Tommy couldn't help but sit, knowing she would not relent until she'd seen him eat something. Next to her brother, he was the one she'd be most protective of, her 'brother from another disappointing father.'

As they'd eaten, Iris had told him about what had happened earlier, back in Haven, before they'd been pulled into this. She told him about the Queens' children coming, how that had gone.

"You have children?" Tommy had been blindsided when they had first told him, having never heard the two of them say anything about their having children, in the time they had known each other, the last few years especially. But at the same time… he would think back to when he was little, before Breach Earth, though he hadn't known it as such for a while, and he could almost remember… A boy. A boy who had been his friend. Had there been a girl, too, much smaller?

"Hi…" a girl's voice spoke from over his shoulder, and Tommy turned, as the four of them looked to the girl in a suit he had seen out there. It was one of the speedsters. She was looking at them all, at the Queens especially, though she looked like she didn't quite know how to act around them. Like she didn't know them… not as much as she should. Tommy looked at her and, without the mask now, she was the picture of Moira Queen…

"It's alright," Moira stood, her voice showing that same hesitation, though coming from a different place. "Come, come. Thea, meet Tommy Merlyn, a friend of ours. Tommy, this is our daughter, Thea."

"Yes, we actually met out there earlier," Thea told her mother, though she was still looking at Tommy. "You said Merlyn? Like the man in your letter?"

"My father and I don't see eye to eye, let's leave it at that," Tommy told her, not wanting her to misunderstand his intentions. The association of the name had more than once made him want to change it; it wasn't as though any of them were their real names. "I don't even have the speed like him."

"So you're like us?" Thea had been surprised.

"For the most part, the rest involves me being a total disappointment to my father," he said with a cheerful smile that might have been compensating for regrets or showing a pride that he wasn't like him. "He wanted to run with his kid, I guess."

When he'd said this, Moira's face had changed. She looked to Robert, who looked to know exactly where her mind had gone, but at the same time appeared hesitant. Was this really the time? But maybe it was… If not now, who knew what might happen next? Would it be fair to send them in blind? She hadn't kept it from Thea so much as she'd never gotten the chance to explain it to her, and Tommy, well, as far as Moira knew, Thea was dead, so what would it matter to tell Tommy the truth without leaving him to grieve all his life for someone he'd never know.

But now Malcolm Merlyn's children stood united, even though they didn't know that bond that bound them. If she didn't say anything, _then_ she'd be keeping things from them.

"Thea… Tommy… There's something you need to know."

X

Sara would not have gone back with them. Though her identity remained hidden beneath mask and hood, it simply felt like walking into a trap for herself. ARGUS generally had a better opinion of her than the cops did, but then there were cops in the middle of all this, one of them her own father, who didn't know it was his daughter under that mask. She would have rather carried on out there, rounding up breachers looking to cause a scene.

Except she'd been hurt. In that struggle against the mass of breachers, one of them had sliced into her side. She hadn't even noticed it, caught in the moment and the adrenaline, but then it had all stopped, and she definitely felt it then.

She hadn't managed to scurry off with her team before Snart had seen her there, bleeding a fair amount, and he'd called for her to be brought back to ARGUS to be patched up properly. She was looking to a very awkward decision, of whether to unmask herself to some medic or end up sitting there, still with her hood and masked while her wound was tended to. But then Michael, who had enough training in him to be allowed, had elected himself to do the bandaging.

So, behind a closed door and with Sin standing guard like it was her life, mask, hood and shirt had been relinquished which the cut was cleaned, and closed, and bandaged. Michael had acted in a silent efficiency that marked him for the steadfast partner he'd been to her. She gave him a nod loaded with all her gratitude, and he'd tipped his head in return before leaving her to dress again, mask and all. The Green Arrow was among them once again.

"You going to be alright to go back?" Sin asked her as she came back out of the room. Michael was already heading back out, and they watched him go.

"I just need to check on something first," Sara nodded. "What about you, you good?" she looked her over, and Sin nodded.

"Worst I got was this giant of a woman, just clocked me, right here," she pointed to a bruise near her chin. "Think she almost knocked one of my teeth out."

"Find out where Michael's headed, I'll be right with you guys. Where's Arsenal?"

"Give you one guess," Sin called back as she left to find Michael.

Sara took a breath, winced at the pain in her side, then let out that breath and put the pain out along with it. Whether it would leave her be or not remained to be seen. Right now, she had to find the handful of the team out of the Waverider who'd been with them today. Snart, Black Canary, Obsidian, Stargirl, and Hourman… also known as her father. She still couldn't believe that was him out there sometimes, especially when he'd go on his hour.

She couldn't see them, not one, and eventually she was told that the jump ship had gone back returning some of the captured breachers to where they'd come from. Well, that was sort of what she'd hoped to know, wasn't it? That they were safe, back out there, all of them. And they were. So now she could do the same.

Then she turned around, and there stood her father, looking back at her. To her credit, she didn't react more than any stranger might have done. She gave him a nod, meaning to move past him and rejoin her team, until she walked past him and he spoke her name. Not Green Arrow.

"Sara." She turned to look at him, shaking her head as though she didn't know who that was. "It was some chance I wasn't there the day the ship picked you up in Haven and brought you home, but do you think they didn't tell me about their bringing a girl back to Main? Do you think… I wouldn't recognize my own daughter because of a mask, and a hood?" She couldn't speak. He took a few steps toward her. "I stayed back while they went back out there, because I saw you out there… that cut… Are you alright?"

It was true, he hadn't been aboard the Waverider when they had brought her home, so much so that she hadn't realized he was one of them at the time. They'd mentioned something about 'Hourman and Obsidian' being off dealing with some case at their other jobs, but it wasn't until the next time the Green Arrow had run into the Waverider that she'd learned just who this Hourman was. It could have made her want to tell him her secret, and yet…

There was no point denying it now. She pulled the mask away from her face, looking into her father's eyes. He let out a breath, like finally they were really seeing each other.

"Hurts, but it'll heal," she told him. He looked like he wanted to hug her, but he wouldn't, because even though she had let him see her face, the same wouldn't be acceptable for the others, and he wouldn't blow her cover.

"Later, we will need to talk about this, and I don't want you to spend the time in between waiting on an argument. I want you to know, right now, I've never been prouder to call you my daughter." The emotion in his voice said it all, and Sara breathed to keep herself from letting too much out. The returning pain took care of that. Her father saw it, and he looked around, at the chaos around them. "Any chance you'll call it a night and wait until morning?"

"I'll be careful," was the only guarantee she could make. He let out a breath. He wouldn't stand in her way.

X

Having left the Queens and Tommy when the conversation had looked to be turning personal, Iris had walked back to her post, feeling she needed to do something there or she would lose it.

As she went, she overheard a small group on its way back out of headquarters. They were discussing a member of their team who'd gone missing. She didn't get a chance to talk to them, but as she sat back at the computer, she let out a breath. The agent who was meant to find Wallace and bring him back had continued to strike out, until he needed to go back into the field.

She still hadn't gotten in touch with her brother and the longer it went on, the more she feared what it might mean. Had their father finally turned him on to his side of things?

X

Thea had needed to get some air. She sat now, just outside the building, watching people come and go, more breachers escorted in, and injured agents, too. She would have taken off and run around the city, to clear her head, but this… this was so much.

"Mind if I sit here?" She didn't need to look up, she recognized his voice.

" You are my brother… apparently." Tommy sat next to her. He still looked as stunned as she did. "I'm going to have to tell Oliver now… It's going to hit him, too."

She had never known her mother, too young when she'd died… when they'd believed she'd died. She hadn't known her father either… Robert Queen… Except he wasn't really her father. And her mother had had an affair, an affair she had born out of. Did her father… Robert… He knew now, but since when had he known? And what was she supposed to feel, growing up, never knowing or ever expecting to know them, because they were supposed to be dead, and now…

Now there was this man. Malcolm Merlyn. And her mother had gone through all this effort to tell her he was dangerous, but not _why_ he was so dangerous, to them, to her. Now she knew why, and it made her head spin. It was too much. And now here was this guy, who was her brother. And the crazy part was she could kind of see it.

"I'm sorry, I swear I had no idea when we talked earlier," Tommy told her.

"Trust me, your face when she told us pretty much proved that already." He nodded, smirking just a bit. "So… our father…" she started tentatively. She missed Anatoly in that moment, missed him something fierce.

"Dear old Dad," he sighed. "How do I even begin?"

X

When the field had been cleared, the breachers carted off, the injured take to ARGUS, Ronnie had gone with them, not for the sake of an injury but to find his wife. Having been given such a news right before heading out with Amaya to seek out breachers… It had given him energy, but also just enough concern that be was cautious. What if something happened to him? What if Cait was left without him when their child would be born? When that cautiousness had nearly gotten Agent Drake hurt, he'd had to pull his thoughts together again, will himself to be careful, yes, but not so much as to cause anyone else to be hurt at his expense.

Now they were back, and he scanned the room until he saw her, across the room, and it took all of him not to reach his arms out, stretching until he could get a hold of her and bring her to him. Still, he had run toward her, and she'd just seen him that he was lifting her into his arms, his wonderful wife… the mother of their unborn child… and her laughter was a song.

X

Tommy had watched Thea run off with Oliver… watched his sister run off with her brother. He wondered if she would tell him now or if she'd wait until later. He couldn't stop thinking about the whole thing. He had a sister… _She_ had the speed, unlike him. Watching her dash off, part of him wanted to be jealous, but the other still would rather distance itself from their father, so… what better way?

He worried what would happen if Thea met their father.

"Tommy Merlyn?" He looked back to where the voice had come from and found himself staring up at the caped one they called Supergirl.

"Yes?"

"I need to talk to you. It's about your father." He sighed.

"A lot of things are today. You're not my sister, too, are you?"

"I… No," she frowned. He got up, so they might talk face to face instead of his having to look up. "Many years ago, my team and I were sent to apprehend a fugitive… That man was your father."

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	10. DAY 020 (vol 2, ch 10)

_Day 20 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 10_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

 **DIRECTOR HEYWOOD'S OFFICE**

With the director needing to be updated and the number of breachers to escort back to where they'd come from both needing to happen at the same time, Snart had elected Agent Sharpe to stay behind and talk with her director, sharing the events of the day as they'd unfolded. Ava had done it gladly, perhaps telling herself the whole thing would go down a lot easier if it came from her rather than from him. Much as she had come to develop a grudging respect for the man who led their team - a far cry from her opinion of him at the start of their collaboration a few years back - she knew better than to expect that he and the director would see eye to eye, especially in a situation like this.

Already the team from the Waverider had been split today, handling two situations happening at once, each one demanding immediate attention, which had led to six of them being off on Breach Earth above the Waverider, and the remaining five to use the jump ship in order to do what needed to be done. They were, at present time, attempting to get in touch with the team back on the ship, to know how their situation was progressing, but so far had been unable to make contact, something she swore they were still attempting to do.

They might not manage to speak with them until morning, but even now Agent Sharpe was of the opinion that they would continue being without the Waverider's assistance and should act in consequence. There simply had been no way to foresee this chain of events. Even without having been held back to escort the Queen siblings to Breach Earth, if the whole of their crew had flown for Mist Quarter to look into this problem with the water and War, the sudden increase of breachers would have forced them into this split.

There was little more to discuss after this except numbers. The injured, the dead, on both sides, and then the breachers... how many they had managed to count as having crossed, the number they had apprehended, those still in their custody and in wait of transport and those already returned... There were still plenty, and the fear was that there would be more. Things seemed to have calmed at this time, well after midnight, but soon the morning would come and there was no telling what it would bring.

"Return to your crew, Agent Sharpe. Get some rest. Odds are you will need it."

So return to her crew she had. Without the ship there, there were no beds left to them but the ones that belonged to them when they were away from the ship. Quentin had gone home, thinking of his daughter the masked archer and hoping she would rest and let herself heal just a bit. Ed would crash on his couch, deciding it would be best if they could leave in haste the next morning. Ava and Lucy would return to the apartment they'd shared since they'd both been new to ARGUS and had become fast friends. And Leonard... Leonard would sleep on the jump ship. He was not leaving it anywhere he couldn't make sure he could keep his eye on it. The others had the main ship, over on Breach Earth, sure, but he trusted them more than he did those at ARGUS who would have loved nothing more than to take his ship and put it in the hands of someone 'better qualified.'

x

 **CLOCK TOWER - BASE OF THE GREEN ARROW**

She couldn't go home. Home would be comfort and letting go. She needed to rest, needed to heal, and she would. But whatever was happening in the city, it wasn't over. A move would be made. Here in the tower she could hear it, she could jump into action a lot faster than she would if she was home. So Sara climbed up into that tower. Sin followed. Michael followed. Of course they would. Michael sat in his usual chair, leaning back to rest his feet on the small table where they would often eat. Sin would pull out the old sleeping bag she'd brought into the tower the very first night where she'd stayed here with her, 'waiting on the action.'

"Couch," Michael had pointed, not one word more, when she'd looked like she was getting ready to go resume her post at the window. She looked at him. "I can only stitch you up so many times," he added. Yes, he'd needed to do her bandage again by the time they'd made it back here, but it had been in the service of saving a father and his children, so all in all she couldn't regret any part of it.

"Fair enough," she'd sighed, pulling her jacket off and inspecting the damage, the long open slash and the blood, all of it hers. She also looked down to her side, the shirt just as torn, just as bloodied, and underneath it the new bandage. It still hurt, but she wasn't letting it get in her way.

She would sleep, eventually, but first she sat and mended the jacket. As she pushed and pulled the needle, her ears were trained on the city below.

x

Not sleeping at this moment was Cisco Ramon, as he turned to look at 'Cynthia.' They'd been sitting near the open space where, just hours earlier, a small breach had been burping out new breachers at a regular pace, and where the two of them, along with somewhere about twenty of their closest friends and strangers turned to acquaintances had beaten back that horde. The scrambler remained where Samantha had planted it, once it was fully activated. If left undisturbed, it would continue to do its job until the breach was good and shut.

"How exactly did you get your hands on something like that? I didn't think the League of Assassins was that much into technology." She smirked. "So where did you get it?"

"I was merely the carrier," she told him. "It happens that someone owed me a favor. I contacted ARGUS, told them I'd be able to procure what they needed."

"In exchange for..."

"Who says an exchange was necessary? If I'm not mistaken, you were the one who told me we fought on the same side once. And tonight we did."

x

 **HOME OF SAMANTHA & RUBY ARIAS**

The babysitter had been scared at the thought of heading home at this hour, especially with 'all those people from that other Earth like that Allen woman was talking about' running around. She'd only agreed to take her chances when Jim had offered to drive her home. He would return afterward; they all needed to talk.

Samantha had checked on her daughter, finding her sound asleep on the couch where she had been waiting for her mother to return. She had gladly pulled her into her arms and carried her back to her bed. After the day they'd had, and before the day they were likely to have, feeling her girl close to her heart felt like the only thing she should ever want or need. Setting her down, she'd been stuck there for a minute or two, just looking at her as she slept. She half suspected Ruby already knew what she'd been out doing with the rest of the team, but she still couldn't make herself tell her. What if she got herself in trouble because of it? It was enough to have to worry about not coming home to her, she couldn't imagine not having her to come to.

Downstairs again, she found Lisa had set herself to making tea, while Kendra had been told to sit and relax, as though any of them were going to relax tonight, with two of their team off who knew where on Breach Earth, and with another gone... kidnapped, maybe... maybe... No, they couldn't think that.

When Jim returned from returning the babysitter home, the four of them sat around Samantha's living room. She had her laptop on the coffee table while she sat on the ground in front of it, typing away. Lisa held her mug in her line of sight, and Samantha pointed for her to set it down before continuing.

"We could split up. Two of us look for Zari, the other two..." Lisa suggested, looking to Kendra on the couch.

"Are you trying to bench me?" she chuckled. "I told you, I'm fine."

"And I believe you," Lisa matched her tone, pausing. "So will you join me?"

"Do you have to ask? But what about the breachers? We're already scrambling to keep up as it is, and..." She sighed. It couldn't be helped, could it? Whether they liked to say it or not, they had to look at the big picture. So many people could die... Some people already had. Could they take a step back from trying to make sure so many more didn't die, too, to look for their friend? They wanted to, so much, and they would have dropped everything to make it happen if not for... If only...

"We'll find a way," Jim persisted. "We're tired now, and we're not going to go looking for her right this second. Let's take the night, to rest, regroup, and..."

"Got 'em!" Samantha proclaimed all at once, and they turned to her. "The two men she described in her message, I have them... and her..." she pointed to the screen. "Security footage near NorCo at the time of the call," she explained, and they all moved to look at the computer.

It was painful to watch. They could see the moment Zari knew she was being followed, the moment she'd taken out her phone to call Lisa, and then, when she'd seen the men. They hadn't come into view, not until she'd started walking away. Then they'd started walking after her. Samantha had several screenshots already gathered and ready to send to each of their phones, to the police, to ARGUS, to anyone who might be able to find her.

As the footage had continued, they had been able to see before Zari ever did the moment when they came to block her path. For a few tense seconds nothing happened, and then Zari pounced, knocking both the guys down and hightailing it out of there. In that moment, not thinking of what would come next, her friends couldn't help but cheer her escape.

It hadn't lasted long. As fast a runner as she was, and they had seen plenty of it in Samantha's efforts to follow her progress down the street through the footage, they had caught up to her. One of them had lifted a weapon and fired at her, literally. He'd shot fire at her, caught her in the arm, and she'd been unable to prevent the other one from catching her, and holding her... and holding... and then she was limp, unconscious. The four around the screen were hardly breathing.

Then the one who held her had opened a breach, and the two men had carried Zari away through it, the breach closing and leaving an empty street.

Sitting in silence, none of them would have known what to say next. They knew they couldn't put her over the whole of the city, but after seeing it with their own eyes, seeing how she was taken, and hurt... What could they do?

x

 **HOME OF CAIT SNOW AND RONNIE RAYMOND**

It was a strange feeling, coming home from the day they'd all had, dealing with the breachers, the battles, the injuries and the deaths and be... ecstatic. The little secret she had been keeping for three days, waiting for the right moment, had shown there just was no right moment; Ronnie would have been over the moon no matter when he found out he was going to be a dad. And now, as everyone returned home and paused, and breathed, and slept, he was here, wide awake, ready for anything. More than anything, he was ready for this, him and her and their baby...

Their whole story had started so many years ago, when she was all of fifteen years old and already five years down the rabbit hole of breachers. She'd been researching, or trying to, and there had been this boy, just standing there and wanting to know what she was doing. He'd had that same sort of curiosity, and that was how they'd started. Between then and now he had been revealed as a meta, and so had she, and there had been discoveries plenty. Now with this baby coming, she couldn't help but wonder, and she knew he would, too. Would their child be a meta, too? Would it have his power, or hers, or a whole other one? Or would it be completely human?

Amaya was staying at their house tonight. 'So we can all leave together when we have to,' she'd say, but they had a feeling she wanted to be there, knowing if any breacher was stupid enough to try and break in here and hurt either of them or this baby, then things would get frosty very quick.

x

 **HOME OF OLIVER & THEA QUEEN**

Walking into their home with their mother and father at their heels, they'd both felt as though at any second they would turn around and see they were alone, that it had all been a dream.

But they were still there, and as exhausted as everyone was, they walked into the house and it didn't feel like any of them were about to go to sleep. Oliver and Thea watched the two of them walk around, taking it all in... Their children's lives, the lives they had missed, existed in these walls. It showed the people they had become, the things they liked... And it bridged a wide gap with pictures hung on the walls.

"Anatoly..." Moira saw him in one of the pictures.

"He raised us," Thea told her, feeling that now almost familiar pinch of old families and new twisting together. "Since... well..."

"Thea, it's alright," her father insisted, and there again... He wasn't her father, was he? Except he was... All her life she'd had two, the one she'd lost, and the one who'd come in his wake. Now she had three, the lost, the steadfast, and the dangerous...

"She calls him Papa Toly," Oliver provided with a chuckle. Moira and Robert welcomed this information with a smile.

"I was five!" Thea defended herself.

"When you started," Oliver agreed, and she smacked him in the arm.

"You should call him in the morning. I'm sure he'll want to see you," she turned back to their parents.

"As we'd love to see him," Robert nodded. When they had gone to him that day, all those years ago, they'd never imagined it would turn into this. But it had, and knowing their choice, forced in haste, had been the right one.

x

 **HOME OF DINAH DRAKE AND FELICITY SMOAK**

After the three of them had been awake, well enough to be on their own and thus no longer living inside ARGUS, Rory had moved into the apartment Roy had already gotten for himself. Felicity might have been able to join them, certainly they would have welcomed her. But it felt like maybe it would have been better if she lived elsewhere. In no time, that elsewhere had been shown to be Dinah Drake's home. They had been roommates ever since, and the arrangement had been a good one for the both of them. Tonight might have been the most important yet.

"I've always laughed off the expression 'you'll dig a hole in the floor if you keep pacing,' but right now I'm actually afraid you'll pull it off, so can we just... come on," Dinah motioned from the couch. Felicity had been pacing, indeed, ever since they'd arrived.

"I need to go out there," she said, no longer pacing but still standing where she'd stopped.

"There?" Dinah asked.

"Haven. Merlyn's there, I can find him, I can stop him."

"The West girl and Mrs. Queen both say he's gone to ground, hiding," Dinah reminded her.

"He's a fugitive. I caught fugitives, that was my job, and I was good at it. How do you think I made captain? Dinah, we've been stuck here, waiting all this time, because he was nowhere. He's not nowhere now, he's in Haven. I can find him in Haven. And if all this is really his doing, then I can put a stop to it."

"Alright, look, I know you won't let this go, no matter how much I beg you to stop, take your time. So, fine, you're going to Haven. But I'm going with you." Felicity smiled; she'd wanted her to come. "And Merlyn's son, too."

"I already asked him," Felicity revealed.

"Of course you did," Dinah shook her head, smirking.

x

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

Everyone had gone home, but she couldn't. Well, she could have, but it would have meant finding a way back to Breach Earth... and back here again in the morning... After all she'd done for them, it had taken no convincing for ARGUS to find her a place to sleep here at headquarters. And she was there now, lying on her small bed, staring at the ceiling. Iris couldn't sleep.

There was still no trace of Wallace. She and her brother may not always have seen eye to eye, but not so much that he would leave her hanging after the messages she'd sent him. He would have called if he could. He hadn't called. He couldn't call. Now she was sure... Someone had taken her brother.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	11. DAY 022 (vol 2, ch 11)

_Day 22 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 11_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **OUTSIDE ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

 **A FEW HOURS AGO**

Tommy Merlyn just couldn't seem to get out from under his father's shadow. He had become Guardian to make a difference in the world, a better one than whatever one his father was making out there, and no one ever had to know who he was for him to feel like he was doing some good. But then this whole thing had started, bringing him from Haven down on to Main Earth, fighting alongside friends and strangers to try and wrest control of the city back from what could only be called an invasion of breachers.

Somehow his father was involved in this, that was all he really knew, and it seemed like it was the only thing he _would_ know, seeing as his father had gone into hiding, same as Iris' father seemed to have done. Oh, and he also had a half-sister he hadn't known about until today, that was new. But then his whole life with his father had been exactly that, hadn't it? Secrets, one after another, secrets kept from him that he really should have been told about. They weren't human. And then they weren't on the same Earth anymore. And then he was basically a supervillain. And he'd hid a sister from him. And, the newest cherry on top… he was a fugitive.

He had never met or even known of Supergirl until this day, coming through the breach at Iris' call and joining the fight. But as the young woman had approached him, he'd discovered she knew plenty about him, or about his father at least. He was the reason she was on Earth at all.

She had pulled something from within her cape, and what at first looked like some small piece of rock had lit up in her palm to project an image before him. Hovering there in the dark of night was a slowly rotating image of a man, younger by a couple of decades at least but unmistakably his father, surrounded by an alien language. He almost wished he didn't understand it, but he did… his father had taught him.

And because he knew the language, he was able to read about the things he'd done before he'd ever come to Earth, before he, Tommy, had been born, the things which had sent him running from whatever part of the universe they'd been from and which had caused Supergirl and her colleagues to attempt to apprehend him.

"Yeah… that's my father…" he'd declared, his voice ringing with the flat defeat he felt. If he had ever wanted his actions as Guardian to help balance out his father's actions… he was going to have to work overtime to balance all of _this_ out… He might have to work at it for the rest of his natural life… maybe tag someone else to take over when he couldn't go on.

"I need your help," Supergirl told him. "I'm going to Haven, to try and find him." Tommy looked at her, at the floating young fugitive's image.

"What happens when you find him?" he found himself asking.

"He will be taken back to answer to his crimes," she replied, and he believed it. This wasn't just about killing him. It was justice. And that he could do.

"Okay. When do we leave?"

X

 **BREACH EARTH, HAVEN QUARTER**

 **THE NEXT MORNING**

It would be a team of four, crossing over from Main and into Haven early the morning after, who would go about starting the search for Malcolm Merlyn. Supergirl, under the guise of her human identity, Felicity Smoak, would be joined by Agent Dinah Drake of ARGUS, and the woman who'd come to escort Tommy on to Main Earth, Lyla Michaels, the CSI/liaison to ARGUS. To say that the whole endeavor had them all at varying levels of anxiety would have been putting it mildly. The best they could do was to make the crossing and get to work.

Their first step, as was regulation for any ARGUS-involved crossings, involved checking in with their outpost. Backed up by the presence of Miss Smoak, whose reason for being on Earth was well known within ARGUS, and Agent Drake's being appointed by Director Heywood himself, and Miss Michaels' status as liaison, the search for Malcolm Merlyn – for the time being to be kept as covert as possible – had been approved, and the quartet had been allowed to head off into Haven.

X

Felicity had never before set foot on Breach Earth. She'd been told plenty about it, from Dinah and other ARGUS agents, but she hadn't left Main Earth until today. It would have seemed like the thing to do, like of course if they couldn't find Merlyn on their Earth, then a solid explanation would have been that he had skipped out off to Breach Earth.

That had been one of the first things they'd meant to do, in the beginning, after she'd awakened from her extended coma. First Roy and then Rory, upon either arriving to Earth or waking up on it, had attempted to dig up information on their fugitive. Only at the time they still hadn't known what alias he had adopted, what human name he had taken in order to hide himself in plain sight. It had only been two years since they'd even connected the dots and found out he had become Malcolm Merlyn. And in that time…

In that time they'd been out there, on Main Earth, as Superman, as Valor, as Supegirl… And going on some wild goose chase across the many iterations of this city, across every last quarter of Breach Earth, when they couldn't say where he would have gone or even _if_ he had gone there, not just somewhere else on this Earth, if he was still alive at all… It was simply not a risk they could take. So the best they could do was to hope for some lead, and then… if it ever came, they would follow it.

Now their clue had been dropped in their laps thanks to a letter from a mother once believed dead, communicating with her children – also once believed dead – and passing on a warning of a man by the name of Malcolm Merlyn. And so here she was.

"It… looks just like the other Earth," was her first statement on Haven.

"Give it time, the differences will start becoming obvious after a while," Dinah told her.

"Where do you all want to start?" Tommy asked the three women.

"Can you take us to his house?" Lyla asked him, and he let out a sigh. He had promised himself he would never go back there, but he supposed this would be about the only reason he would break that promise. At least his father probably wouldn't be there, so that should make it easier, shouldn't it?

When they'd arrived, stopped to stand in front of the house where Tommy had grown up, he knew it really wouldn't make it easier at all.

"We lived in this same house back on Main Earth, did you know that? It looked exactly the same, so when we came here, I had no idea we'd even gone anywhere. And my father, he let me go on believing it, because… somehow that made sense to him. I had friends, back where I'd really grown up, now they were gone, and I didn't understand why. My father told me they'd moved away, or… they couldn't play with me anymore. I was a kid, so I just thought I'd done something really wrong, if none of my friends wanted to talk to me anymore. I'd go to their houses, but they wouldn't be there. There'd be other people living there, saying that they'd been living there all along, and they didn't know these friends I was looking for. I thought I was going mad," he told them, still looking at the house.

The crazy part, of course, was that through all of this his father still proclaimed that everything he'd done he had done out of love for him. And he probably meant it, in his own way. It didn't change the fact that, seen from outside his point of view, it was just wrong.

The security codes hadn't changed. His birthday, his name – his 'true' name at least, something none but the two of them would know about… They allowed Tommy to open the door and allow the others in with him into the home of Malcolm Merlyn.

Felicity had waited for this moment longer than she could say, but deep down she had a strong feeling it wouldn't get them anywhere. Merlyn wouldn't have remained hidden this way all this time without knowing how to cover his tracks. And if he had really gone to ground, then he would know that anyone looking for him would come here first. He might even know that they would use his son to gain entry. She scanned the house from where she stood, her eyes seeing past walls and ceilings and floors, her ears seeking any sounds that might warn of the presence of explosives… She'd expect no less from him.

But there was nothing. And as they'd venture deeper into the house they would find this was the case overall. He had left behind nothing that would point the finger to his having been up to something, including devices to deter intruders. He would appear as innocent, human. Lyla had swept the house as a CSI would, and she could only be impressed at the absence of evidence.

They had left the Merlyn home and made for a diner where they might sit and have breakfast, none of them having yet stopped to eat. There, between pancakes and eggs and the likes, they had set about a plan of action for where they might go next. Tommy had helped in building up a list of places they might look into, people they could speak with. There was no guarantee this would get them anywhere closer to finding him, but it was what he could give them to start with.

"There are two men watching us," Dinah spoke quietly as they were in the process if figuring out where they would go first. Sitting across from her, both Lyla and Tommy had attempted to get a look at these men, and while they both spotted them quickly enough, it was Lyla who put their minds at ease.

"It's alright, I know them," she told the other three, sitting up straight and reaching to shut the tablet sitting in front of Felicity, guessing rightly that they were about to be approached.

"You disappeared on us yesterday, everything alright with the kids?" one of the men asked her.

"Yes, they're fine, I was called on a case, had to leave," she explained, giving nothing away. "Guys, meet Detectives Garrick and Darhk, I work with them down at the precinct. This is Tommy, and Dinah, and Felicity," Lyla made the introductions. Going off of the looks on the two detectives' faces, there was little to no chance they didn't know something was going on.

"And is this case of yours going to keep you away today, or can we expect you down in your lab?" the one she'd called Darhk asked her.

Felicity, who had been staring at the two of them without a word since they'd come up to the table, now turned the tablet back on and pulled up a photo.

"Malcolm Merlyn, ever heard of him?" she asked. The detectives looked at the image, while the trio sitting around Felicity turned to look at her. This was her case more than theirs, her call to make if she wanted to trust them, but this left them no less blindsided by the choice.

"Name rings a bell, can't say I could place it off the top of my head," Detective Darhk told her. "What'd he do?" Tommy just barely resisted the urge to reply with 'what _didn't_ he do?' Only Lyla was familiar with these men, the rest of them had no way of knowing how much they could say, especially if the two of them didn't know or didn't believe in the quarters and the other Earth. Not everyone did…

"Breacher, long time sought," Lyla told them. The one called Darhk looked immediately exasperated at the mention of breachers, while the one called Garrick became at once invested.

"Which quarter?" he asked.

"No quarter. He came from Main," Felicity informed them. "And much further before that," she went on, with a look which telegraphed 'alien' without having to say the word. Now both the detectives were looking at her.

"Hold on now," Darhk turned to look at Tommy, like there was something just on the tip of his tongue. Then it came to him. "I've seen you before. At the Queens' house." Tommy's eyes widened with a similar recognition. And then he relaxed. This was him, the detective Mr. & Mrs. Queen were friends with, he _had_ seen him once.

"Damien, right?" he asked, and the man tipped his head.

"Tommy Merlyn," the detective remembered his name now, too. He looked back to the photo. "Your father?" he had to guess.

"Unfortunately."

"Main's being overrun with an overwhelming number of problematic breachers, we believe he's behind it," Dinah pitched in now. "We're attempting to track him down, but he's gone into hiding. We're keeping it as quiet as possible. The last thing we need is for him to see us coming."

"But any insights you might have to share would be welcomed," Felicity added.

X

The detectives had left them to their search, with the assurance that they would look through a few things on their end. If they found anything promising, they would get in touch. Until then, they had the list as provided by Tommy to look into.

They spent the better part of the day going from one end of the city to the other, finding nothing but frustration and disappointment. Maybe it had just been too long, and what Tommy recalled of his father's associations before they'd parted ways. Maybe he really just kept everything so close to the vest that no one knew who he really was. Maybe those people they talked to, who claimed not to know where he was knew _exactly_ where he was, or at least knew how to contact him, and they would, letting him know people were looking for him. Unless they intended to knock some heads to find out – they didn't – then they had to move on and hope to find another source.

But before long there just weren't any more sources, not from Tommy's list anyway. They had been at this for hours, and somehow it left them more exhausted than the previous day's endeavors in beating back the waves of breachers coming across the city beneath the breach. They found themselves in a diner again, a different one than in the morning, feeding themselves for necessity more than any real hunger in a way. It was never going to be easy, and this was really only a preliminary sort of search, going through what might be more readily available to them. They hadn't really expected to find anything, not if they were honest with themselves, but it didn't make the lack of direction any easier to swallow.

"Our worlds weren't what you might call sister worlds, but they were in our system, close enough that my team would be dispatched in search of him," Felicity had started to tell the others as they sat there and ate quietly. "My team and I, we didn't have the powers we do here, back on our world, but he, like others from his, had the speed. It could have made more sense to send a team of other speedsters after him, a fairer chance for them to succeed.

"But they chose us, because our track record spoke for itself. There was no fugitive we couldn't bring back." She paused, lost in her thoughts for a moment. "Until him. If not for the incident, our ship getting locked in stasis, we might have found him earlier, might have brought him back, although…" she stopped, stealing a glance to Tommy. _Maybe he wouldn't have been born._

"You're here now, and you're going to find him," Dinah told her with confidence. A few seconds later, Lyla's phone vibrated. She looked to the screen.

"Garrick and Darhk want to meet. They say they might have a lead."

X

Lyla had let them go on ahead when they'd reached the precinct. They'd been in Haven all day and she hadn't had a chance to check in with the nanny, not since morning. Part of her wanted to go and find her and the twins, bring them back to Main with her when she went back, assuming they went back, but with everything happening, the breachers… They might have been better off right where they were, even if that somewhere wasn't with her.

When she'd gone to find Tommy, Agent Drake, and Felicity, she'd found them sitting in a briefing room along with the two detectives and another man. Somehow, she didn't recognize the other man until she'd walked into the room and he'd looked up at her. She stopped. If nothing else, Lyla's colleagues had the common sense of looking apologetic.

"Hello, Lyla. It's good to see you."

"John," she kept his gaze. "Thank you for coming in," she spoke evenly, as though she'd been aware he'd be the one Jay and Damien would contact. "You have information on Merlyn?"

"No idea where he might be now, but last time I crossed paths with him, he was running with a guy called Joseph West." This much, via Iris, they had mostly assumed, and if this was all he had to give them, then it wasn't much at all, and it wouldn't get them any further. "The way they were talking, they were working something big. And they weren't alone."

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	12. DAY 024 (vol 2, ch 12)

_Day 24 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 12_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

Six times Iris had woken up in the night, turned on to her side and stretched her hand to the ground to check her phone. She'd rigged it so she'd get notified if a message came through from Breach Earth for her. But there was never anything there, no reassurance that her brother was safe and deeply, deeply apologetic for the scare he'd been putting her through. Six times she had seen this, though only five times had she rolled back with a sigh and waited to fall back to sleep. The sixth time she didn't try again, just sat up on the small bed ARGUS had given her for the night, scrubbing at her tired face with both hands.

That last time, it had still been early, and she'd been able to watch as the quartet comprised of Tommy, Agent Drake, Supergirl, and Lyla Michaels had gone across to Haven, to begin their search for Malcolm Merlyn. She could have asked Tommy to drop by Wallace's home while he was out there, in case her brother had made it back there, but she couldn't. They needed to focus on finding Tommy's father, and her brother… well, for now, it would remain her problem alone.

Though she, like many more, had gone and gotten some sleep, walking through headquarters now it was clear that nothing had stopped while they'd been sleeping. There were agents at their stations, agents walking along, heading out or coming back in… Picking up some of the chatter as they went, she got the sense that they had been attempting to track down any breachers still roaming, catching them while their guard was down. If they'd caught any of them, she didn't know.

There was little else for her to do now but to get something quick to eat before offering her services once again. She needed to feel useful right now… She needed to be able to think about something else than what her father might have been up to, where her brother could be, whether he was hurt, or dead, or caught up in their father's schemes…

X

 **HOME OF OLIVER & THEA QUEEN**

Captain Anatoly Knyazev had, in his youth, supposed that one day he might marry, have children, build a family. Never had he suspected he would instead find himself, at the age of thirty, becoming father and sole parent to a twelve-year-old boy and three-year-old girl. And that would already have been sufficient to drop him in the middle of a world he didn't know or comprehend, but then these weren't just regular children. They weren't human, and they had powers. The little one didn't hers yet, but the boy did, even though he hid it from him. Anatoly let him go on believing he had no idea for a number of years.

It wasn't easy. None of them had sought out this reorganized family. Little Thea had it the easiest in some sense. She had been too little to really know the difference, and her new father had become someone indispensable to her, as she had become to him. But Oliver was a twelve-year-old boy, nearly thirteen, who had years and years of memories of a life with his mother and father, and now they were dead, and he and his sister had been shuffled off to a stranger. Anatoly had shaped himself into a friend to the boy more than a father, at first. Then the years had started to pass, and somehow the dynamics had shifted without their seeing it. Today, he would present them as son and daughter, as he would be presented as father by each of them.

When they had shown him the letters the day before, revealing to him just as they'd discovered that Robert and Moira Queen were still alive and well, living on Breach Earth, he had been blindsided. The primary response, and the one he'd given, naturally, had been support, knowing through all those years they'd had together just what his boy and girl needed to hear. He didn't know what would become of it, or if anything _had_ already, and really how could he have, after the chaos of the day before. His detectives, his officers, had been in constant activity, dealing with calls of breachers, of intruders and thieves and attackers. It never stopped.

This morning, he had been summoned by his daughter to stop by the apartment, and so here he was, knocking at the door, with no clue of what waited on the other side. Thea opened the door, greeting him with a smile and an embrace before escorting him inside. He didn't get the chance to ask her or Oliver what had happened the day before, after their conversation, because as he moved further into the apartment… there they were. Sitting at the kitchen table… Twenty years older but very much his old acquaintances, old friends… Robert and Moira Queen, back from the – presumed – dead.

"Anatoly…" Moira had gotten up at once, moving to greet him with an easy hug, loaded with gratitude which words could not have expressed. Much the same could be said when Robert had his turn of reuniting with the man who'd stepped up to look after their children all these years before. Watching the three of them now, it was hard for both Oliver and Thea not to wonder, not to want to ask questions they just didn't have time to unpack now.

Like, if they had put the two of them in Anatoly's care when they had, then there had to be a reason… they had to know something might happen to them… Then something _had_ happened, and now…

Again, it wasn't the time to discuss it. Instead, they'd ended up talking about the previous day, everything they'd been doing and trying to do, dealing with the breachers. With a new day starting, they would soon be bound for ARGUS headquarters once again.

X

 **HOME OF CAIT SNOW & RONNIE RAYMOND**

She'd woken up with the slightest of starts, caught in a nightmare, and right away there had been his arm, coming to wrap itself around her, holding her near, reassuring her.

"You alright?" he asked, barely awake but fully alert. She looked down, seeing how his hand had just as soon gone to rest to her stomach, as though the gesture had already become something familiar in him. Just seeing that, she'd mostly forgotten what the bad dream had been about.

"I'm fine," she'd told him, meant it. She rested her hand over his, unable to keep from smiling. "Just a bad dream. It's over now." He'd snuggled up closer now, pressing a kiss to her shoulder, and she'd breathed out. For now, all was well. But the day was just starting, and there was no telling what this one would bring them. "Promise me you'll be careful out there?"

"Always," his voice came muffled at her back.

"I mean it. I'm already terrified that something might happen to you, and I know I shouldn't be stressing so much…" Ronnie had moved and turned her so she might look at him.

"I'm coming home," he told her, his hand still pressed to the flat of her stomach. "To both of you." She'd smiled at that, even if she couldn't completely chase her fears. Ever since she'd come into her powers, ever since she'd become a speedster, it had felt like she couldn't wait to run some more, but now, thinking of this little thing inside her, this beginning of a child, _their_ child… She'd never felt so firm to the ground. She couldn't back him up anymore, not without jeopardizing their future. It left her feeling helpless, loath as she was to admit it.

Heading downstairs soon after that, they were greeted by a full breakfast, as prepared by their couch guest. Amaya looked like she'd been up for a few hours already, hard at work.

"Any word from Barry or Eobard?" Cait asked, receiving a shake of the head.

"The papers are all over what happened yesterday though," she told them. "Some people have started to leave the city. Others are holding their ground, defending their homes."

"That won't turn into a mess at all," Ronnie frowned, reaching for a bit of the breakfast Amaya was in the midst of preparing for them, only to be met with a flash of frosty eyes and immediately retreating. Cait was served first, minding that she got everything she might need, much to the benched speedster's amusement and the pretend – and not so pretend – frown of her elongating husband. They would enjoy their breakfast, the three of them as friends and teammates, thinking of what the rest of their team would be up to, off on Breach Earth, and also thinking about what the day would bring for them.

X

 **HOME OF SAMANTHA & RUBY ARIAS**

"Tomaz, T-O-M-A-Z, not Thomas. Look, check the feeds around NorCo yesterday, you'll see her _and_ the men who took her… That's not important, what _is_ important is my friend was kidnapped, and if you could just… Yes, I'll hold," Samantha pressed her free hand to the kitchen counter, stopping herself from pounding a fist against it instead. She'd been on the phone for what felt like an eternity already and the detective left her so aggravated that only the care she had for her missing friend could have kept her from hanging up. She didn't know who of the police or ARGUS or just their team would manage to find Zari and bring her back safely, but she would leave no stone unturned.

Lisa and James had gone back to their respective homes in the end, promising to return early the next morning, leaving Kendra in her care, sleeping off her collision of the night before. As she'd been attempting to relay the information she had to the detective on the phone, she'd looked up to find her guest had woken up and was now walking toward the kitchen to join her. Samantha kept an ear to the phone, waiting for the detective's return.

"How are you feeling?" she asked Kendra.

"I've had worse," Kendra pronounced, running a hand to the spot on her head where the pain had been the night before. It still appeared to feel a bit tender, but all in all she'd be all set to return to the field, wherever she would be needed. "The cops?" she asked, nodding to the phone, and Samantha's face said precisely how that was going. "Want me to check on Ruby, make sure she doesn't come down here yet?" Now Samantha's face said something more like 'yes, thank you, you are an angel.' "Maybe I'll give her some archery tips," Kendra added with a smirk at the new shift on her teammate's face.

Kendra had gone upstairs, finding young Ruby was already awake, and standing at the top of the stairs, which left it as anyone's guess whether or not she'd heard anything, but at Kendra's appearance, she'd retreated with an innocent smile, as though she could pretend like she hadn't been snooping. Meanwhile, downstairs, Samantha had finished her call with the detective, for whatever good it would do. Once they got back to ARGUS they could do something about it… she hoped. The situation hadn't really changed, had it? The city was still in chaos, and a missing person case would probably not fall to their attention, even if the kidnappers were breachers.

And what would she do about Ruby? Between what she'd seen and Zari's kidnapping… The whole city knew something was going on, with Nora Allen's message, people were leaving, and the schools would be closed anyway. Maybe Lisa could keep an eye on her… or maybe she could stop ignoring the possibility that Ruby knew more than she let on and just take her to ARGUS with them.

X

 **THE BREACH SHIP WAVERIDER'S JUMP SHIP**

Leonard Snart had been waiting on his team – what part of it he currently had at his disposal – since he'd woken up. Already he could see on the jump ship's screens that the city had started to wake and so had its invading breachers. He also suspected some people would attempt to benefit from the situation, making claims that 'breachers' had stolen something valuable of theirs, or taking something that had never belonged to them and letting the blame fall on the shoulders of those people from the other Earth. It would hardly have surprised anyone, but then that was how it went, wasn't it?

He'd checked in with the Waverider, had been told by Cat that they were presently in War, investigating, and that he would be contacted in due time. The AI sounded sort of different, for some reason, although he couldn't put his finger on what that difference was.

He didn't like having the team split up this way. It felt to him too much like they would miss something they would otherwise have noticed. They had grown as a team, something he was about as protective of as he was of the ship itself. The sooner they were all back together again the better.

Ava and Lucy had arrived soon enough, Quentin and Ed not far behind, and now it was five of them again inside the jump ship.

"Any word?" Ava asked.

"The others are still dealing with the Mist water problem. Breachers are already out and about in the city this morning, maybe a few locals benefiting from the mess, too. Also, a team has crossed into Haven in order to attempt to find and apprehend one Malcolm Merlyn, believed to be in some way responsible for the influx of breachers. As for the five of us, today will most likely look a lot like yesterday."

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

The Green Arrow and Spartan walked in that morning, having left the other half of their team – vocally opposed as one of them had been – back at the clock tower, waiting to hear back from them after they checked in with ARGUS. Seeing many of the faces and masks they'd seen the night before in the light of the still early morning, as they either arrived or stood already in wait, ready to head out into the city, it was impossible not to grasp the immensity of the situation as it presently stood.

"Your father's here," Michael informed her.

"I know, I see him," Sara told him. How was it that seeing him there, after the previous night's 'unmasking,' made the cut in her side flare up? Oh, she knew, of course. Part of her knew it was reckless, to go back out there while she was still healing, though another part spoke louder, the part that knew she was needed out there far more than she was on a couch or a bed, doing nothing. The quiet part who campaigned for her sitting out the day wore her father's face, even though she knew he would not stop her doing what she had to do; he was proud, he'd told her.

Seeing him also made her think about her sister. To her knowledge, Laurel was still in the city, hadn't gone running like a lot of people had. Call it stubbornness or something else, she would not be forced out of the city, and as much as Sara respected that, she also would have preferred knowing Laurel was somewhere else, somewhere safer. If she had any chance at all, she'd have to check in with her.

As the teams and the agents came through and were directed back out, Iris would watch them all go, one by one, trying not to let herself get pulled into the idea of recruiting one of them to look for her brother. It was already something that she hadn't abandoned her post and gone to track him herself.

Then she noticed one of those teams hanging back, and from what she could see they were attempting to speak to some agent or another, too, though they weren't having much more luck. After half a minute had gone by and she could still see them there, looking sort of torn and a bit desperate, she'd made up her mind and gotten up from her post and approached them.

"Sorry, excuse me? Hi, I'm Iris West, I… Well, I'm not an agent, but I sort of work here right now, long story. Are you looking for someone?" There was one man among them, three women, and a young girl, all of twelve years old. All except the girl she'd seen here the night before. When she approached them, they looked to one another with some hesitation before one of the women spoke up.

"We were hoping to talk to someone about a friend of ours, she… well, see for yourself," she pulled a phone from her pocket and soon handed it to Iris. It showed a video, and as Iris watched, she saw the pursued Zari Tomaz, before she was captured and taken off through a breach. By the end of it, she felt a new discomfort build up in her chest. "We know with everything happening right now it might not look like it deserves the attention, but…"

"Are you alright?" the man asked, and Iris looked at him and the others, looked back down to the phone.

"This was yesterday?" she asked. They nodded. She closed her eyes, taking a breath. "I've been trying to get a hold of my brother since yesterday, he… he hasn't gotten back to me." She knew it could mean nothing. This woman here had been taken from Main Earth, her brother was on Breach Earth, but then… all these crossings, and on the same day… What were the odds the two events were or weren't related? "I'll look into it, I promise. Are you going back out there?"

"They are, she and I are staying here," said the woman who'd handed her the phone, tapping the girl's shoulder. "I'm Lisa, this is Ruby. Thank you," she went on, the gratitude in her and the new bond formed of their mutual missing loved ones was shared all around. Hopefully, all of them would get their people back safely.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	13. DAY 026 (vol 2, ch 13)

_Day 26 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 13_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **SOMEWHERE…**

Wallace couldn't say how long he'd slept, although according to Zari it might have been somewhere about three hours. However long it had really been, what amount of sleep he'd gotten had done him some good, and he surrendered the 'pillow' made of his jacket, so she might get her go at it. She was trying to come off like she didn't need it, but he could see the exhaustion in her face. Once she'd set herself down, minding her injured shoulder as she tried to get comfortable, she'd been out and sleeping in no time. With a sigh, Wallace had gotten to his feet, the better to settle into his shift, looking after his co-prisoner and inspecting their prison.

In his dreams he had been pursued by a vast shadow with a shape he could only identify as his father. No matter where he would run, or hide, the shadow would always find him, always attempt to stick itself to his feet, like some nightmarish reverse Peter Pan sort of thing. But Wallace would keep on running, with his own shadow firmly defending its position against the invading one attempting to supplant it. He would remain his own self, wouldn't turn into his father. But that shadow was so relentless, and many a time it had come close…

When he had woken up, the shadow had been clawing at his own, and it felt like it was about to win… But then he had opened his eyes and he was back in that room, with only Zari for his company. He hadn't mentioned his dreams, and he had let her get to sleep without any conversation. Whatever she'd thought of while he slept, it could wait until she got some rest, too.

So he walked around, doing a lot of what she had been doing, probably, while he'd slept. He looked at the walls, felt at them with his palms, with the four fingers he currently had at his disposal. The other six were still bandaged and generally useless. There were a few stains on them by now, from when they'd eaten their way through the tray left for them. And they ached and itched, to the point of near agonizing frustration. He did his best to ignore it and focus on the walls instead.

There had to be something, just had to. They'd been brought into this place, and so had the food. Maybe some metahuman had the ability to hide the entry points, to create and remove them at will, and if that was the case then there really was very little in the way of hope for either Zari or him to get out of there. So they'd just have to ignore that possibility. There was a way out of here. They would find it. They wouldn't stay prisoners to whoever held them.

Whoever… In his head, he feared one thing, and he'd kept it to himself, but now that Zari slept, he couldn't help but think… maybe… He couldn't say which side of the room would be the place where they might be watched from the outside, so he only turned his eyes up to the ceiling, the general 'out there.'

"Dad?" he spoke, not too loud, not too quiet. "Dad, if you're out there, please, just…" He sighed, looking down at his feet for a moment. "Just let her go. I don't know why you took her, and I'm not going to ask… Not even sure you'd tell me anyway. Just… Just let her go, and then I'll stay, alright? But let her go. Please?"

The room remained silent. He looked down to the ground, where Zari still slept, then back up to the ceiling, to the walls around them… Nothing came. The minutes passed, the silence starting to weigh on him. He wanted to shout, to hit something, like he might be able to tear down one of these walls all of a sudden. But he couldn't, and instead he sat on the ground next to his co-prisoner, and he waited for her to wake. If his father was really out there… and maybe he wasn't… He wasn't in a hurry to show himself or to hear him out. Maybe he wouldn't do it so long as Wallace could see how this room worked. After a while he'd gotten up again, walking to the other end of the room. There he sat again, facing the wall and counting the minutes off on his fingers.

Eighty-six minutes and forty-eight seconds after he'd started, he heard a stirring and looked over his shoulder to discover that Zari was waking up again. She was still here. With a sigh he'd gotten up and moved back to sit with her.

"What were you doing over there?" she asked, sitting up and working out the kinks of having slept on a hard floor.

"Testing to see what they'd do if I wasn't looking, I guess…" he shrugged, realizing it sort of defeated the purpose of their sleeping in shifts. He wasn't going to tell her about his gamble over the possibility his father was the one holding them. Sure, they might have taken her out of here, but now he go to thinking he would have had no way to know if they'd let her go, or if they'd just put her in another room like this, or worse.

"Well, they took the tray away," she noted, and he looked down to the spot where it had been.

"I didn't even notice," he bowed his head with a sigh.

"So… Didn't find anything else, did you?" she asked, and he shook his head. "Okay, come here, sit with me," Zari moved to sit against the wall, her back flush against it. With nothing better to do, he'd done as she asked, sitting with his back to the wall. "Look up at the ceiling, like… right under where the fake windows give off a bit of light, do you see?"

He looked, just as she instructed him to, and for a while he didn't see anything, no. But she was looking so sure about it, so sure that he would find something there, so he kept looking, and after a while… He frowned.

"What is that?" he spoke quietly.

"I think it's a mirror. I tried it all around the room. Can't really see them anywhere else, but here the little bit of reflection from the lights… They're all over the place. I think that's how they do it. Mirror tricks, light tricks… It doesn't explain where the doors are, but I think that's why we don't see when they bring and take away the tray, or, well… when they brought me," she lowered her head again, absently feeling at her shoulder.

"Maybe… these bits are part of it, too?" he suggested, turning to feel at a part of the wall behind them. The walls were mostly smooth, but there were stripes, very faintly seen, mostly felt, and he'd felt them in his circuit of the room, palms and four fingers as his only tools. The stripes gave very little in the way of grip, and he'd bloodied enough finger tips that he hadn't even bothered to try, but after a while it did seem like the strips were of a different sort of smoothness, something almost glass like… or mirror like. Now that Zari inspected one, looking around the room, they could both see how they lined up with the tiles on the ground.

It could have been that somehow they were able to make the room appear empty but for the two of them though they weren't, long enough to pass through and leave or take away what needed to be brought or removed. If that was the case, then it wasn't exactly encouraging.

"Someone went to a lot of trouble to put this place together," Zari put it into words. "So how do we get out of it?"

The question remained heavy and unanswered in the air as minutes started to tick away, and away, and away… By now neither of them could say how much time they'd been in this room, what day or time it was, and that disconnect from the world was as unnerving as their captivity itself.

"Zari…" he sighed. She looked at him, and then she saw what he was looking at. More food, more water. That wasn't even what held their attention either. In one corner, a small room looked to have appeared out of nowhere, like a pillar dropped into the previously rectangular room.

"What the…" she got up, just as he did. They walked toward the corner, cautiously approaching, until they could peer into the column and discover… "Oh." It was a bathroom. Actually, it was just a toilet. "What, no sink?" she looked at the ceiling. Wallace… laughed. It was hard not to follow suit after a few seconds. It was either that or being sort of creeped out. "Would you mind?" Zari asked, tipping her head to the side to signal 'going somewhere else.'

"Right, I'll go to the other end," he made himself scarce, calling back, "Would you like me to sing?"

"I… don't even know any more," she sighed.

Soon after they were sitting to their second meal. They hadn't been able to ignore the new inclusion to their room's structure. Wallace, in particular, seemed focused on it, and after a while Zari had to say something.

"Just go if you need to, I'll go stand somewhere else."

"No, that's not it, or… that's not all of it. There's no door."

"Believe me, I noticed,"

"I mean, it's just a wall, all the way to the ceiling. I think I can climb up," Wallace explained, and she stared at him. "I've seen it done. I can grab on either side of the wall with my feet and climb, or I can go in and plant my feet on either side of the toilet and…" he mimed climbing with one hand and foot on either wall.

"Sure, you could try," she agreed, and hard as it was to have to poke holes into his idea, she almost had to. "But then what? Say you do make it to the ceiling, what do you do after that? What are you going to hold on to? And what if you fall?"

"I don't have to try it now, but it's a start, isn't it?" There was just a bit of hope in his eyes again, and… no, she really couldn't squash it.

"It's a start," she bowed her head. "Just promise you won't try it unless we have more than a start."

"I won't," he swore. "Besides, if they're watching us, it'll probably be one of those things I can only try once. Last thing we need is them taking our toilet away."

"I really wish I could laugh right now," she frowned. They really couldn't lose that stupid toilet. As it was, they couldn't even be sure that their captor or captors weren't hearing every last word they were saying and already knew they were up to something. Maybe they needed to keep the toilet room in sight at all times so it wouldn't get taken away.

As the tray was emptied little by little of its contents, not so fast as before, as they'd eaten not so long ago, they looked to what remained to them like their rainy day hoard.

"We have to be in the city somewhere, to get those still fresh and hot by the time they get to us," Wallace suggested, indicating the empty fast food wrappers. "Do you guys have Big Belly Burger, too?" he wondered.

"Oh, yeah. There was even one in War… Pretty sure that place would survive anything," she chuckled to herself, though the implication wasn't lost on her. They might have known where they were if the chain didn't exist on one Earth or the other, but at this point they still had no clue. Still, it was something worth investigating, so they had looked at the various contents on the tray to see if any of them didn't exist on either of the Earths.

"This… I don't know this brand," Wallace picked up one bag and showed it to her. She held it and the memory of the first time she'd eaten these cookies came to her.

"One of the first things I had after I left Breach Earth and got to Main. I had so many in those first few weeks I couldn't eat them for months after."

"Then we're on Main," he declared.

"Probably. Or someone likes to hop breaches to do their groceries," she had to point out. This room was just one mind tease after another, it wouldn't have surprised if their captors tried to throw them off track with something like this, too. Wallace was holding on to his find though, so she didn't try and take it away from him any further.

"If we're on Main, then my sister can't help us… or Tommy, he's a friend of ours, our dads… It's complicated."

"So I've heard," she looked down to the cookie wrapper still in her hands, twisting it around. "Well, I have a few friends of my own on Main who are probably trying to find me right now, although… there's sort of this thing going on around the city, so they might not get the chance… But I'm sure they're trying," she tried a splash of optimism, for both their sakes.

"Are they cops?" Wallace asked.

"No, well… Jim, he used to be with ARGUS. You know about ARGUS, yeah?" He nodded. "Right, so he used to be an agent, but he got kicked out, long story. Then we have an archer, a tech wiz, then we have one, she… well, it's a long story, too, but basically she didn't exist and then she did. We have two more, one of them's got this suit, gets to fly around and shoot at things and he can shrink, and the other one's a meta, he can open breaches and all, but… well, right now they're on Breach Earth, helping some other friends, last I heard. I don't know… maybe they'll hear what's going on and come back, but…" she shrugged.

"I wanted to join ARGUS once," Wallace told her. She looked up, curious. "With my dad and all that," he explained. "I might still do it… if we get out of here. I haven't exactly been dealing with the whole dad stuff very well, I know my sister's been disappointed with me, but then she gets so busy with her own things, so…" Zari looked at him for a moment, not so long ago a stranger, a blank canvas, now filled in to become someone she could feel she knew.

"I think you would make a pretty good agent." He looked at her. "I mean it. You're determined, you've been pretty cool under pressure, all things considered. And you definitely have that whole not afraid to jump into dangerous situations thing, with the scaling up plan there," she nodded toward the corner bathroom, bringing a smile out of him. "You took care of me," she added, pointing to her shoulder. "And you don't give up. ARGUS would be lucky to have you."

"Now we just need to get out of here first."

"Oh yeah, that," she deadpanned, tossing the twisted wrapper on the tray. "My friend, Sam, she could probably work up something with all this," she pointed to the trash from their meal. I should probably start paying more attention when she goes off into one of her diatribes, maybe I'd pick up a few tricks."

"I have an idea," Wallace told her.

"Yeah? Let's hear it."

"You're not going to like it," he warned, and she gave him a frown. In some ways, he reminded her of her brother, which was both good and bad, good in that she got along well enough with him, bad in that he made her worry a lot.

"Go on," she sighed.

"They obviously don't want us to get too hurt, or starve, or... you know," he gestured toward the bathroom, and her face scrunched. "So what happens if one of us does get hurt... like a lot." Her glare reminded him of his sister. "I think I can climb the wall and fall in just a way that it won't be so bad, but I can act like it's worse than it actually is. You just sort of freak out, play along. Maybe someone will come in to look after me. Then you just... Can you fight?"

"I grew up in War, I get by," she promised him. "I'm still not sure you should do it, you could real hurt yourself, not fake hurt."

"Do you have any better ideas?" he asked, and she sighed. She really wished she did.

"Wait a little while more, then do it, don't tell me when. Got it?"

"Yeah, got it."

Twenty minutes went by, more or less. In the last few, Wallace started to look at the bathroom wall, like he was getting an idea. He got up from the ground then, walking up to inspect it. Zari turned to look at him.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I want to try something," he told her, taking hold of the wall with one hand. She got up.

"Wallace, whatever you're thinking, don't, it's not worth it."

"Yes it is. I can't stay here, we can't stay here. I'm getting us out of here."

"This is crazy, you'll get hurt, you could... Wallace, stop, stop!" she approached him as he held on with both hands and jumped to lock his knees around the wall, too, starting to pull himself up. At this point, Zari couldn't say that she had to stretch very far in her pretending to sound worried.

He was actually managing the climb pretty well, which would have been good if she didn't know that getting to the top promised nothing... and if she didn't know that any moment now he would let himself fall. Any moment... Okay, he was getting pretty high now.

"Wallace?" she called to him. He kept climbing "Wallace!"

And then he did it. One of his feet slipped, and then he scrambled to clamp on again, but he slipped, and slipped, and then, in a perilous loss of grip, he fell back and to the ground at her feet. Her fears had nothing of pretend. She rushed to crouch at his side, knelt next to him and turned him over.

"Wallace? Are you..." He cried out, started twisting about like he was in a lot of pain, and she knew that was the plan, but so long as they were in the middle of his plan, she honestly couldn't say if he was really good at faking or if he had actually failed his fake fall and hurt himself for real. "Help!" she shouted. "Help! Please, whoever's out there, please, he's hurt! Help!" She turned back to him, to his wails of pain, and her hands were shaking, holding him close. Her brother's name burned on her tongue and she almost spoke it.

And then something did happen, though in no way what either of them had wanted to happen. A piercing, shrieking sound filled the room. The instant response was for her to jam her hands over her ears to try and block it out. And in the same moment she reached up to cover her ears, Wallace stopped twisting around on the ground and covered his ears, too. He was okay.

And that was what they'd wanted to find out.

A few seconds later the sound died away, leaving the two captives with a ringing in their ears, hearts ramming in their chests, and a realization that their plan had been foiled.

"You're okay?" she still asked.

"Yeah, fine," he assured her, and it was stronger than her, she had to hug him.

"We're not doing that again, you hear me? We'll find another way." The worry was so strong coming off of her, when he promised they wouldn't do it again, he meant it.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	14. DAY 028 (vol 2, ch 14)

_Day 28 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 14_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

Ronnie tried to look at the fun, sort of nostalgia side of having Cait's voice in his ear again instead of having her by his side as they would go out into the city, their team doing what they'd always set out to do. She was back at ARGUS right now, alerting them to any breacher activity near Killer Frost and him, and they would follow her directions, and he would think about when it'd be like this, back before she had gotten her speed. He would think about all those times he would slip in some kind of small innuendo, just to hear her remind him the others could hear him, too, and know that she was probably trying to keep from laughing.

Except of course right now the reason she was back out of the field was one of protection, for her and their unborn child, and what he heard in her voice when she'd speak to him would be concern, much as she'd try not to show it. She struggled to not be out there with Amaya and him, shorthanded as they were while Firestorm was off on Breach Earth, and with the unpredictability of the breacher problem, when her speed could have been such an advantage for all of them.

"Be honest, are your hands going all hummingbird right now?" he asked as he and Killer Frost stood back, watching an ARGUS transport take away the two breachers they'd just caught, quite by chance, as they appeared on to their Earth. Now they were standing in wait, making sure this wouldn't turn into another constant crossing point like the night before.

"Might be, a little," Cait confessed, and he smirked to himself. "Wait… I see something, one block north from where you are."

"What kind of something?" Killer Frost asked, frowning to the spot where the breachers had emerged minutes ago before she and Ronnie started off in the direction Cait was sending them.

"Seven breachers are going at it."

"Going at what?" Ronnie asked.

"Each other, they're fighting. Four out of War, and I think the other three are from Light."

"Oh, that is just what we need, breachers brawling in our backyard," Killer Frost grabbed hold of his arm even as she created a road of ice that would bring them over the mass of fighting breachers up ahead. "I've got War, you take Light. Jump!" she called, and they dropped in the middle of the fighters.

He couldn't think about Cait watching all this back at ARGUS, stressing over him. He focused on the breachers he was trying to bring to a stop. Sure, his meta abilities made him very nearly impervious to anything, but there had been moments where the 'nearly' had been shown, and he had learned not to think himself untouchable from that. It didn't mean he wasn't going to have a bit of fun… Going out there, catching them by surprise with what he could do… who wouldn't like that?

If it wasn't enough to keep thinking about Cait's stressing, there was his other teammate, the one presently making her way through this fight with him. She may have been Killer Frost now, but on the inside she was still Amaya, and he knew what she still carried in her heart, the fear and the anger, the trauma of the invasion of her building. The scars were not just physical, and they hadn't just brought out the meta in her. They had left her with a tendency to get carried away with breachers, especially the troublemakers. Despite the name, to his knowledge, she had never killed anyone, but one of these days, if they weren't careful… He knew, they all knew, Amaya didn't want that.

It didn't come to that, not that day. In time, the two groups had been split up, and they had been locked down. Per Cait's alert in their ears, they knew the jump ship team would be coming their way as soon as possible to take the breachers off their hands. Until then, they could only keep an eye on them.

"You alright?" Ronnie turned to Killer Frost. She looked at him, that glint in her eyes… When they had first been getting to know each other, first teaming up, he hadn't known her enough to know whether or not she would just up and attack _him_ , too. Some days, he still couldn't say for sure. Her fury ran cold as ice, and it gave chills.

"Better now," she simply told him, and he let out a breath.

X

The city was not exactly deserted, but walking through it, they could still sort of feel this… this emptiness, this lack of life. Most people were either remaining out of sight, in their homes, or they had just left the city… Not everyone had gone away, no. They could see others as they went, some of them peering through windows, others braving their way out of doors, looking at them as they passed by. Did they think they were breachers? Did they know they were there to help? Did they have it in mind to try and do something to try and help… or fight?

"They know we're on their side, right?" Cisco wondered, looking around.

"Maybe your girlfriend prowling around like that isn't exactly helping," Sin turned to look at him before looking to Cynthia, just a bit ahead of them.

"Not my girlfriend," Cisco told her, though he saw no way that she didn't see him steal a glance to make sure the not girlfriend in question hadn't heard a thing… the same going for the rest of their team.

Sara walked ahead of them, Michael by her side. It was hard not to catch on to the bickering at their backs, although if anyone would pull it off it would be them. They were focused on isolating any signs of trouble, whether it came from breachers or the people of the city itself.

Bickering or no, they'd all five of them stopped when they heard the sound of gunshots up ahead. And in the next breath, they were running in the direction of the sounds, each one of them tensed and prepared for whatever they would find.

They quickly discovered the identity of the shooter. A security guard stood outside a convenience store, his weapon still in his hand and shaking, staring into the store but standing outside of it. When the sound of several people running in his direction reached his ears, he jolted to the side, briefly pointing his weapon at them, until he saw who they were and lowered it in recognition.

"Please, they're going to take everything, I-I'm not… I can't…" They could have left this to the police, but at this point it just didn't seem prudent to leave the chance for more bullets flying. "There were three of them."

"I'll go first. Speedy?" the Green Arrow called, looking over her shoulder. The young woman came to join her, and they walked in slowly, after instructing the others to surround the building and be ready to intervene if need be.

As they padded through the store, a few things registered with them. The first were the traces of blood on the ground, telling them the security guard might have hit one of the breachers. Then there were the sounds, guiding them along, which hardly painted the picture of a bunch of thieves or looters. Once they came upon the trio, it felt like they'd already put the pieces together.

They were a sort of sickly pale, eyes round and a bit hollow, all of them possibly late teens to early twenties, two boys and a girl. Mist. They were definitely from Mist.

One of the boys had been hit, the bullet getting him in the leg, and he was sitting up against an open freezer. The other boy and the girl had pulled any number of cold things to press to the bloodied leg, maybe hoping it would help stop the flow. The wounded boy was in a sort of frantic agony which would have been to be expected maybe, knowing where he was from, what coming here must have been like, only to have this happen.

The girl had been the one to see the two of them first, and she'd gasped, throwing her hands in front of her face and away from the swell of a still small but noticeable pregnant belly. A judgment call had to be made, and looking at these three, the terror in their eyes, it wasn't hard to make at all.

"We're not here to hurt you," Sara promised them, showing her hands.

"We… we have money, we do," the second boy reached into his pocket, pulling out a few rumpled bills. "That man, he just saw us and started shooting."

"Did you just cross from Mist?" Sin asked, and they looked briefly surprised that anyone would know, but then they explained that they had not _just_ crossed. They had been here for three weeks already, though they'd been struggling to find their way, to find shelter and food. And then since the day before, everything had been so much worse, with all the breachers. They'd only come here to get away from the conditions in Mist, so the injured boy, and his brother, and his brother's girlfriend and their baby, could all have a better life.

"Spartan, get the van around the back, don't speak to the guard," the Green Arrow spoke, getting confirmation in her ear. "Right. So this is what's going to happen," she looked to the trio.

While Arsenal and Cynthia went on standing their posts outside, they had loaded the injured boy and the others into the van and driven away, at which point they were to rush into the store and 'discover' that the breachers had disappeared. In the meantime, the Mist breachers would be taken to where they would be tended to, and then, once someone was able to come to their aid, they would more suitably settled into the city.

Unfortunate as it was, they would have to remain out of sight until this situation was taken care of, although they hadn't appeared to find much misfortune in this. They had received many thanks from the girl, and assurances that they would help in any way they could, if ever the need presented itself.

X

Leaving Ruby back at ARGUS had made sense overall, even if it had meant opening up the door to some secrets along the way. She would be safest there, that was what Samantha told herself, and if she could have one less thing to worry about – especially when that one thing was the most important for her – then that would be a good thing. It would be the second 'mixed feelings' kind of development that day. They hadn't found Zari again, not yet, but at least someone knew, someone was listening, and they were going to do what they could to help. Iris West was the heroine of both these things. She was keeping an eye on Ruby along with Lisa, and she was looking for Zari… and possibly her brother.

"It's just too much," Kendra was saying as she and Samantha and Jim walked along their area of the city, looking for trouble. "Abductions, invasions, and whatever Jax and Mike are up to on Breach…"

"We'll get through it," Jim promised her, and if this new day didn't already weigh on them as it did, the others may have chuckled. That was Jim Olsen for them, a determination that could not be shaken. "And we'll get our people back. All of them."

He no longer wore the ARGUS uniform, not since they'd dismissed him, and now he had made of himself what they would not let him be. On a day such as this, it really was never so important that he would be out there and represent what he could of the legacy he'd meant to carry on when he'd first joined up. He would make his father proud.

"You hear that?" Samantha spoke, just before a voice spoke in her ear.

"Mom, there's looters ahead of you!"

"Ruby?"

"Sorry, she got the mic before I could… but yes, looters, like she said," Iris was saying now. Samantha looked to Jim and Kendra, and then they were running on. So she _had_ heard glass breaking.

It didn't take long for them to realize that the people making quick work of the electronics' store's supplies were not breachers but people of the city, some of those who had not rode out of the city or stayed in their homes.

"Right, that's the last thing we need right now," Jim stared at the people grabbing and pushing their way around the store, others climbing through the broken window to join them. He raised his weapon in the air and gave off two shots. The shouting and the motion halted, as all eyes turned toward the noise to find the man with the gun still in the air, flanked by a woman with an arrow to her bow, ready to let it loose at any time, and another with a metal sphere in the palm of each of her hands. "Put everything down and get out of here and no one has to know you were here."

X

No one could know but the two of them just how many times they had run side by side across the city, the Flash and Kid Flash, for no other reason than just to run. There were also times where they did run around for a specific reason, looking for something, someone, intervening in some situation or another. Today, they were out there again, putting out fires wherever they were found… sometimes literally. It would have been exhilarating if it wasn't all so stressful. So many breachers, so many problems, and they just kept multiplying. There was no stopping.

"Do you think they did this after they got here?" Thea asked her brother as they ran. He looked at her, not understanding. "Mom… and Dad…" she awkwardly explained. "Do you think they ran like us? They could have done the rest, too, helped people."

He hadn't thought about it, and it almost didn't seem possible that she'd be the one to consider it before he did. He had known them, made memories with them, before they had died… or before they had supposedly but not really died, twenty years back. He had known why he had this speed, where he had gotten it from, and by association he had known that they'd had it, too. It was just such a different thing back then, and not long after finding out… his parents had been taken from him. After that day he had only ever really seen them as what they'd been for most of the life he remembered, just his mom and dad, not aliens, not speedsters… just his parents.

But now here they were, with their parents back with them on this Earth, and the possibilities were opening up again, including this one.

"I don't know," he told his sister. "Guess we'll have to ask them when we…"

It was as though they'd run over the edge of a cliff and still tried to run, until finally they remembered they couldn't walk in the air. No, it was actually more like they'd been running at impossible speeds and then someone had tripped them up and they went crashing and rolling to the ground at that full speed. No warning, just a monumental fall, and then they were lying on the ground, breathing hard.

"Thea?" Oliver coughed, no mind of code names or anything else except to ensure that his kid sister was alright. He turned on to his side and spotted her lying there, staring at the sky but definitely breathing. "Are you hurt?"

"Fine," she groaned, which sounded a lot more like she wasn't fine. "What the hell happened?" she asked, slowly sitting up. He moved to stand up, stumbling a little before getting on to his feet. As he did this, he could feel something wasn't right, and he couldn't pinpoint what it was at first, but then he knew… He tried to run, and… he couldn't.

"What are you doing?" she asked, standing up to join him.

"My speed… I don't have it," he told her.

"What? How…" she frowned, but then she could feel it, too… Could _not_ feel it.

They looked around, as though they would see someone standing there with some kind of device that would explain why they had just lost their speed, but there was nothing.

"We were coming this way," Thea moved back the way they'd come, walking with all the unease of that sped up tumble. "It just happened…" There actually were marks on the ground, deep grooves, where they had been as they fell, like the press of their feet tripping up had crushed into the street. Thea moved to stand on the other side of those prints, and as she did… She lifted her hand before her eyes, finding it vibrating again. "I got it back?"

"Well I didn't," Oliver walked toward her.

"I don't get…" she started back, crossing the footprints once more, and as he did… "Scratch that, now it's gone."

Oliver looked at her, at the ground. He walked past her, past the prints… and he felt his speed again. Now it was starting to make sense… mostly.

"There's something here, cutting off our powers," he told his sister. When he said this, she started to walk around, stepping along, pausing, walking again. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to see where the line goes."

He did just as she did, going the other way. For several minutes they walked along, their speed returning, going away, returning, going away… After finding the trail, how the threshold went along in a loosely circular pattern, it didn't take long for them to start to understand something, although for the time being they kept on following the trail, following it… until they met up again and the trail was complete. Looking at each other, they knew they both had the same answer, especially as they took a closer look. Stepping away, on the side where they still had their speed, they contacted ARGUS.

"There's a building out here, giving off… some kind of energy, or signal… When we get close to it, our speed doesn't work anymore. We're not sure what this is but… I think we're going to need some help," Oliver told the agent who had answered. "Listen, it's not just that. There are people inside, we can see them through the windows when we're inside the circle, and they're banging on them like they're in trouble, but outside the circle… we can't see them anymore, like the building's empty, but it's not. Now please send some agents here?"

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	15. DAY 030 (vol 2, ch 15)

_Day 30 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 15_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

The call had been put out through ARGUS, spreading to those, agent or no, out through the city and doing their part. It had reached Ronnie and Killer Frost, who had been near and naturally made their way to lend a hand. But it also reached the Green Arrow and her team, and it reached the Waverider's jump ship and those sailing in it, and while they were in no way near or unneeded where they had been at the time, they had turned around and headed toward the besieged building as soon as they'd learned its location.

The resident of the penthouse apartment atop that building was Laurel Lance.

The Elongated Man and Killer Frost had reached the building before any of the ARGUS agents ever did, though coming from the opposite side, they didn't cross paths with the speedsters until after they found out for themselves what happened when they crossed into the perimeter encircling the building.

Ronnie had felt the change in him almost instantaneously. Coming to a stop, he'd stared down at his hand and looked for all who might have seen him as though he was only flexing his fingers, his wrist, like they had gone to sleep and he wanted to work sensation back into them, but that wasn't it.

"It's not working, I can't…" he frowned, turning to Killer Frost, even as she followed him and froze – figuratively – and gasped as she felt the change course through her, her appearance reverting to that of Amaya Jiwe.

"I can't feel her anymore…" her hand pressed to her heart as though she might have been able to sense her somewhere. "It's just me."

"Guys, come back this way, it's alright." They turned, and there were the Flash and Kid Flash. "We really need to get a chalk or something, mark the limit," Kid Flash turned to her brother.

Retreating back over the line, Ronnie and Amaya had felt their powers once again, just as the speedsters had promised. A few times they tested the threshold, just as they'd done, not only feeling the ebb and flow of their powers but also seeing the appearance and disappearance of the residents at the windows. Amaya stood inside that circle now, powerless and… powerless. The chill in her veins now was not born of Killer Frost's presence but of her memories of the night her own building had been taken by breachers… They had to help them, couldn't leave them to die…

Leaving the rest of their team behind, the Green Arrow and Spartan had sped off across the city. It might have taken much longer to get there if the jump ship hadn't set down in their path and taken them aboard to join them. Sara saw her father there, and all of them having already known who she was, until the night before they had all been going along as though _he_ didn't know… Now she knew that he knew and it still felt strange being there with him in this way. Except it didn't matter, not now… Laurel… They had to get to her, to make sure she was okay.

"I'm setting us down two blocks away," Agent Sharpe called back to the rest of them, piloting the jump ship. "Whatever's going on around that place, we don't know what it'll do to the ship."

So the jump ship had landed, cloaked and hidden away before its seven passengers took off toward the building. There were two ARGUS vehicles when they approached, a dozen agents spread out, seemingly laying down markers in a circle, ten feet in a circle around the building. There were onlookers, keeping at a distance but inevitably drawn in to wonder what was the cause of the blockade. And then there were the four standing just on the outside of the marked circle, friends and acquaintances all.

"What's all this for?" Leonard asked, indicating the markers. The quartet shared a look, as though trying to decide the best way to show them.

"Black Canary, yeah?" Kid Flash stepped toward Agent Lane, and she nodded. "Come, stand right here," she pointed just outside the circle. Lucy hesitated, then approached as told. "Now, do your thing and keep doing it, then walk that way."

"Okay…" Lucy shrugged, breathing in, and with as low of a cry as she could give, so not to alarm anyone, she took one step forward, and a second, and a third… and all at once the cry felt as though it was crushed out of her. She raised her hand to her throat, startled, tried again, but nothing came out.

"Now come back to us, try it again." Again, she did as told, and as soon as she broke through the barrier, the cry came bursting from her again. "Count yourself lucky, you didn't hit that mark the way we did," Thea pointed to the foot-shaped dents in the street.

Agent Sharpe had stepped forward to test the barrier as well, and so did Ed Thawne. Ava tipped the cosmic staff's end past the markers, and even standing safely outside the circle, she could feel the power it held and granted just… die away, no more powerful than a prop, cold and lifeless. Pulling it back to her side, its power roared back to life. For Ed, upon crossing the barrier, the effect was just as instantaneous. Standing inside the circle, he could no more have harnessed his power over shadows as he could have claimed to be any more than the man he appeared to be.

"We haven't tried to go inside, like we were told when we called it in," Oliver told the rest of them. "ARGUS wanted to make sure there weren't any other surprises."

"Well, this barrier is giving me Future Quarter vibes, so I'd say that's a guarantee," Leonard declared, looking up at the building.

"My sister's in there," Sara told him, drawing the speedsters' attention. After all she'd done for them, getting their mother's message to them… "So I'm going in. This thing can't anything from me," she pointed to the circle with her bow. Standing at her side, Spartan remained silent, but there was no doubt, if she was going in, he was going in.

"And that's my daughter in there," Quentin had moved to join them, nothing more needing to be said. After that, it was like dominos falling. The Waverider team, the Green Arrow, Spartan, Elongated Man, Killer Frost, and the two speedsters… Power or no, they were going to put an end to this siege.

X

Choosing this place over any other had been, for the most part, random. The part that _wasn't_ random consisted of the fact that, in more or less this spot, in Future Quarter, stood their university. For all the elements this Earth's city shared with their own, in its primitive ways, this one had been different, and once they'd seen it they had known… this would be the place where they held up their end of the bargain. The man had wanted mischief, and mischief they could do.

Oh, it wasn't just about mischief, of course not. They were scholars after all, the first and second in their class and perpetually working to either maintain or attain that position over the other, over the one they loved. For the sake of anonymity, that was how they had chosen to style themselves, First and Second… First's idea, of course, much to Second's quietly held frustration.

"How long do you suppose they will attempt to break through the grid?" asked First, standing at one of the penthouse's windows, looking down on those gathered in the street. Standing at her side, Second watched, too, her hands locked together behind her back. "A bargain's a bargain, but I do want to study this city, this Earth, before we return to our own."

"I say let them keep on trying," Second turned to look at First. "You and I, we can go down and observe their attempts. It will be so much more interesting that way." First looked back at her now, a grin spreading across her face.

"A sound experiment… Yes, let's," she nodded, kissing her classmate and partner. "Now, what do we do with her?" she asked, both girls turning their heads to look across the room, to the penthouse's owner, who now seemed to be waking up after they'd forced their way through her door and knocked her out. Second looked back to first, letting out a pitiful sort of sigh as again their 'academic standings' somehow translated to her doing what her competition would not.

When Laurel Lance would finally wake up fully, they would be gone. Their parting gifts would come in the form of a splitting headache left over from a blow to her head, vague memories of her assailants' conversations, and a set of cuffs fixed to her wrists. These were no common cuffs, something she was able to attest to, seeing as they had locked her hands together in front of her and not at her back.

They covered each of her arms from just above her thumb and down two inches past her wrist. There was no chain between the two, no, and she could move her hands, over, under, side to side, but never any further than the point where both cuffs continued to touch. She could not separate her arms, could not bend her wrists, her thumbs… and no matter how she moved each cuff around, she saw no seam, no fastening. The cuffs were just about molded to her arms, and she couldn't free herself from them. It felt as though they were part of her arms themselves.

Slowly pulling herself up to her feet, taking a few deep breaths, she'd quietly walked all through the apartment, confirming that those two girls were gone, from here at least… They could still be in the building, they could be just outside her door… What other choice did she have? She went to the door, already foreseeing a difficult going of opening it, with nothing but eight fingers to work with.

But there was nothing for her to grab. As soon as she touched what looked like a very real lock, she found it was like rubber, stretching past her touch. Startled in surprise, she'd tried the knob and found the same problem. She tried pushing the door itself, and it was all the same… door and frame together… She was trapped. Staring at her inexplicable door, to the strange cuffs around her arms, she might have lost her cool, but… no… not her. No, she could deal with this. One thing at a time…

X

Stargirl's flight had never been so perilous. Ava had to remember always, as the cosmic staff allowed her to rise into the sky that, should she cross the barrier, she would immediately find herself robbed of this power and plummet to the ground. So up she went, up, up, not forward, never forward. Even going back or side to side carried the risk of her losing sight of where the limit stood, so all she had was up, and down again when she'd seen all that she could see.

Down at ground level, everyone watched her like her fall was more of an eventuality than a possibility. There were inflated mattresses at the ready.

But she made it safely back to the street without incident, with barely a sign of any of the nervousness and half held breaths that had accompanied her rise and descent.

"I went until I could see the roof, I never saw anyone through the windows," she reported to her team, their allies, and her fellow agents. "No sign of devices outside the building or on the roof, I'd have to go again until I've seen the building from all angles, but I don't believe it will do us any good. Whatever's causing this, it'll be inside." They'd hoped that maybe the field didn't extend all the way up, that maybe they could have seen the residents from higher up… But there was nothing.

"What about underground?" Michael suggested and they turned to look at him.

X

Laurel could see them all down there, the agents, the heroes, the onlookers… So people had responded, maybe that was why the two girls had left. She was too high, there was no chance they'd hear her if she tried to bang on the window, and that was just as well. With these cuffs on, she'd probably crack the window by accident and go tumbling down to her death… Either that or the window would stretch like the door did, and she'd be left scrambling to get back to her feet.

So these cuffs… She paced the floor of her living room, moving her wrists together, trying to pull them apart… It didn't work, but the way she saw it, seeing how things didn't work was almost as important as seeing how they _did_ work. She tried so hard not to be a tiny bit fascinated.

There had to be a way of opening these, she believed it. They had come on, and they could come off. Something was keeping them from completely separating, so what was it? Magnets? It had to be more than that.

She wondered if her father was down there somewhere. He was a cop, he would have heard about something happening at her address, if there were all those people outside. She had already tried to call him, to call _anyone_. But after struggling to try and make a call, to send a message, anything, she'd found nothing would connect, another gift from her captors with their strange tricks and tools.

She would get herself out of there, she would. First she had to deal with these cuffs.

X

 **BREACH EARTH, HAVEN QUARTER**

"So they were married?" Tommy spoke quietly as he stood with Felicity and Dinah outside the room where Lyla now stood alone, talking with the man the detectives had brought in with a lead to their Merlyn search. He was called John Diggle, but they also called him Deathstroke.

"It's a long story," was all Dinah would say.

"Probably starting off with the fact that he goes by _Deathstroke_? I've heard the name before, I just never imagined he'd have a wife, I mean… one who worked with ARGUS."

When Lyla walked out of the room, they got one look from her that told them they were now leaving the precinct. What the two of them had discussed was not for them to know, and they wouldn't ask. Right now they had plenty more to occupy their time, like what John had told them about Malcolm Merlyn and Joseph West.

According to him, they had attempted to recruit him into some sort of venture. He'd never gotten the details of that venture, seeing as he'd turned them down from the start, but after they'd amicably parted ways, John had kept tabs on them from time to time. On one such occasion, he'd seen them with three other men. He couldn't identify any of them, and he hadn't gotten to look at them from near or for long enough to describe them with any precision, but he gave what he could. One was a tall black man, the other two white. One of those was blond and well put together, the other had long dark hair and a beard. John wished he could give them more, but already it was more than what they'd previously had and so they had thanked him.

"What do we do now?" Dinah asked, looking to Felicity.

"John told us when and where the meeting took place. We'll start from there."

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

There'd been no telling what would happen when they rolled the crane up to the building. With how everything else had been affected, they weren't a hundred percent sure this wouldn't stop working either. Calling into the building wasn't working so far, and attempts to get through the door had been just as useless. They were still investigating Michael's suggestion that they might try getting in through the ground, and until then they needed to get a better look at the situation… and they needed to offer some kind of solace to the people trapped inside.

The crane didn't appear affected, driven past the barrier without incident, and so they had to decide who would go up in the basket. At once, the Green Arrow and Hourman had volunteered. Climbing inside the basket, they could see the sign already fixed to the front, explaining that they were aware of the situation and were doing everything in their power to get everyone out of the building. They had not added anything like 'stay calm,' feeling it would only make matters worse.

They would do what they could in order to get the message across to any of the trapped people, and at the same time get information in return if they could. At the bottom of the sign, they had asked for them to write back and tell them if they had seen anyone in the building who didn't belong, if they had seen objects, technology, anything that might be behind this. Whatever they'd seen or experienced, it could help get them all out of there faster.

As the basket had started its ascent, weaving along to look into as many windows as possible in the process, the two passengers were ready to photograph each response they'd see on the way back down, but really what they wanted to see most of all was whatever might be happening up in the penthouse. It would be several minutes before they got up high enough.

"She doesn't know about Hourman, does she?" Sara asked her father.

"And she doesn't know about the Green Arrow…" he countered, even though he knew she was alluding to the fact that he didn't have a mask to hide _his_ face.

"She knows I put her birth mother in jail. Now's not the time for _that_ conversation." But then she knew… She knew how Laurel felt about the Green Arrow, just like she knew what would happen when she saw her standing there next to their father. One way or the other, Laurel would figure out who stood behind that mask today, and maybe it was better if that revelation was an open one instead of her connecting the dots.

So she had lowered her hood, and she had pulled the mask from her face. And when the crane's basket had come at level with the penthouse, Quentin and Sara Lance had come eye to eye with Laurel Lance, there at the window, a dried trickle of blood along her hairline and strange cuffs around her hands. For them, seeing her, to imagine what must have happened with her but also to see she was alive, it was anguish melted into relief.

For her to see them there, it started with relief, and then it passed into recognition… and shock… and apprehension… and as she recognized the suit her little sister wore… betrayal.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	16. DAY 032 (vol 2, ch 16)

_Day 32 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 16_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **OUTSIDE LAUREL LANCE'S APARTMENT BUILDING**

"I have to say, as uninventive as these people are, they do make a good dress…" Second commented, looking down to herself for a moment, looking to First at her side for much more than a moment. "I will have to show this to some of our people back home, see what they could do with these pieces." First looked down at herself now, too.

"I think they would call it 'retro,'" she told Second with a smile. They had taken both dresses from the closet of the woman in the penthouse. If they were going to pass themselves off as casual onlookers, they couldn't very well present themselves in their own clothes, right out of Future Quarter, could they?

"What are they doing now?" Second wondered as they stood there, observing the agents around the building.

"Trying to get inside, clearly," First replied, with laughter in her voice.

"Oh, now, that won't work," Second shook her head dismissively as they watched the latest attempt. Already foreseeing the result this would create, they had taken a few steps back, for precaution. A few seconds later, there was a dull bursting sort of sound, and a man in an ARGUS uniform was blown away from the door to the building, sent flying until he landed in a heap, not far from the onlookers. Several of those civilians backed away or ran off when this happened, none of them moving to see if the man was alright.

"No, it clearly didn't," First craned her neck, trying to see if the man was alive. When he moved, she looked almost disappointed.

"I want to see them try a window," Second told her, like a giddy kid waiting for a prank to go off on their parent.

"Now, compose yourself. This is why I'm top of the class and you're… under me," First gave her a pointed look.

"Only in class," Second matched her look. "And only for now."

X

 **LAUREL LANCE'S PENTHOUSE**

When the scandal had broken out surrounding her birth mother and she had eventually been arrested and sent to prison, Laurel had been blindsided. And then, when the public's outrage had turned toward her, toward the new face of her mother's company, she had wanted nothing more than to disappear. After spending all these years wanting to discover where she'd come from, after spending so much time believing that she had found her legacy in the world, she had learned the truth. She was fruit from the poisoned tree, she came from… that woman.

She might have thanked the person who showed her the truth, who ensured that the woman would be punished and brought to justice. But then that same person had effectively brought her whole world out from under her, had been the cause of her own fall from grace, into the fire of public shame, for having done nothing more than to want to reconnect with the person who'd given her life.

When she'd started trying to figure out who had been responsible for her mother's downfall, she hadn't known what she would make of that information if she found it, hadn't known why it was so important for her to know. But then she had found out. The person who had unveiled the truth about her mother was the masked archer known as the Green Arrow. The person who had turned her life into hell was the woman who called herself the Green Arrow. And when she found this out, Laurel knew what she felt… The Green Arrow had ruined her life.

The Green Arrow was her little sister.

She knew it now, had seen it for herself, and still the revelation sat there in the pit of her stomach like boiling lava. Sara… _Sara_ … It couldn't be. She would never. She would not do this, not to her.

But then what did she know, right? Her sister had been gone for five years, and when she'd come back she'd been a whole other person. _The Green Arrow_. Her sister…

Except, if she thought back to before Sara had disappeared, she had been against Laurel getting in touch with her birth mother already, so how much had she changed that, so soon after her return, the first thing she'd done was to bring her mother down… and Laurel with her. Sara's return, the Green Arrow's arrival… So close together, and she had never made the connection. It would have been funny if she wasn't so angry now.

All this time. All this time it had been her. All this time she'd kept this from her, and now…

When she'd seen them in that crane, Quentin Lance and his daughter… Hourman and the Green Arrow… Those names were known to the city, heroes, the both of them. And then here _she_ was, the poor little orphan they had taken in, the bad seed… And right then it wasn't the glass between them that separated them. Right then she had to wonder who she was anymore, had to wonder if she had really been to them what they had been to her.

After she'd seen them there at the window she had moved away from it, gone far enough that she didn't have to see them and they couldn't see her. She sat on her bed, and she breathed deep, because whatever happened from here on out crying wouldn't be part of it.

Her room was a mess. There were clothes on the ground, pulled, hanger and all, then dropped on the floor. Those girls… hadn't broken anything, hadn't made any mess, except here. And now that she looked at the pile, she started to see some of the clothing wasn't hers.

Crouching wasn't easy, her hands stuck together as they were, but she managed it, started to pull at the items that weren't hers. _They took my clothes._ It wasn't going to be a big deal in the long run, but it did sort of stay with her, wondering why they'd need to. For now, she inspected the clothing, sought out pockets, anything that might have held something… like maybe a way out of these cuffs. But there was nothing.

With a sigh, she'd sat there on her bedroom floor, twisting her arms again, watching the cuffs move, never parting, always touching, or at least never parting. She looked at them, twisted her arms around until she could try and see between them. She held them to the light, and she moved them together, just a little, just to see what happened in the space where they met when this happened. And when she saw it she had a thought.

She had learned plenty while working at her mother's company… at _her_ company. She'd learned more than they'd ever give her credit for. And now she was going to use that knowledge and get herself out of this.

X

 **OUTSIDE THE BUILDING**

"What if we threw lightning at it?" Thea suggested, standing next to her brother and watching the agents still trying to come up with another way to get through that door after the last guy had been sent flying right off to where the onlookers had been sent scampering.

"It could blow a hole in the building," Oliver replied.

"But at least it'd be something," she shrugged. "Come on, what do we have to lose? Just be careful where you aim it." Oliver looked at the agents, turned to her, looked back to the building. Even though they couldn't see the residents from outside the circle, they knew they were in there, scared, trapped. Including the Green Arrow's sister.

"Alright, just… be ready to catch it if it bounces back or something," he instructed, and she nodded. After everything they'd seen of previous attempts, it wouldn't surprise him.

When he'd run his plan through with ARGUS, he'd been met with a bit of resistance, but then Leonard Snart and his team had backed up his play, so everyone had backed away to what – they hoped – was a safe distance, and then the Flash had started to run… and run… and run… until he held that lightning and, veering toward the building but keeping on his side of the barrier, he tossed it at the point where the doors met.

It never made it to the building. As soon as it went past the barrier it fizzed out of existence and it was gone. It never got anywhere close to the building.

"Alright, so that didn't work, but, you know, at least we tried it," Thea sighed when he came back to stand with her. The agents got back to what they'd been trying, and the wait continued.

Everyone was trying to come up with something, everyone. Those of them with power, with _something_ that should have enabled to help, who had found that something taken from them in crossing the barrier, they stood there with the focus in their eyes, the frustration of those who had seen the thing that made them who they were in this fight just get taken away. They were helpless. They had other skills, sure, but how were any of those going to help them here, against this oddity.

"Definitely Future Quarter," Leonard Snart was saying, as he watched the ongoing efforts.

"Can't you just go there, get something to break through that?" Ronnie suggested, turning to look at him as he'd overheard. Leonard opened his mouth to reply, but then paused and closed it again as he considered this.

"Sharpe, Lane, let's get back to the jump ship." The two agents nodded and fell in step with him. Passing Ed Thawne on the way, Leonard gave him a tip of the head. _Look out for Quentin._ Ed nodded back. He'd keep his partner safe.

X

Sara knew without turning that her father had approached, stopping a few feet away to watch her as she paced to and fro. When she turned and acknowledged his presence, finally, he took a few steps toward her. He had that look on his face, that 'I know what you're thinking' Dad face.

"Surprised it took you that long to come looking for me," she told him. When the crane had brought them back down, she hadn't even waited until the basket touched the ground. She'd jumped out as soon as she knew she could make the landing, and then she'd marched off and gone… here.

"Figured you might need a few minutes to yourself." She bowed her head, quiet. "Sweetheart, she had to find out sooner or later. At least now the two of you can… put all your cards on the table and start from there."

Sara wondered what Laurel would think if she found out her mother had been the one to order that she be removed from the picture, if she knew that the reason she had been gone for those five years was that her mother had realized she was getting too close to the truth. It had almost been poetic to think of how the woman had effectively created her own undoing. If she hadn't had Sara pushed away, if she hadn't caused her to be thrown on to Breach Earth, Sara would never have become the Green Arrow, and she might never have gotten to the point where she was able to bring her down.

It was almost poetic, yes, but at the same time it didn't change a thing at all. It didn't fix the problems that had been created when she'd finally acted against the woman. Laurel had still been hurt, and she still carried that hurt with her at all times. Sara could see it, no matter how much her sister tried to hide it. She may have transformed it into a source of strength, but it was still there, would always be there. Should she have let her carry on living in blissful ignorance though? No… Much as she hated to admit it, there'd been no other way, not once the woman had gotten her claws into Laurel.

"It won't be that easy, you know it." He didn't counter that. He knew how deeply it had affected Laurel, everything with her mother, the downfall… He'd tried so much to keep her from going through anything because of that woman, but he could only do so much. At some point, it had to be Laurel's choice, and it had been, until it had all gone to hell. "Are they in there yet?" Sara asked, nodding back toward the building.

"Firing blanks on all sides," Quentin shook his head. Sara stared off at that building, up to the top, the penthouse.

"Maybe not all sides." What did they have to lose, giving it a shot?

X

 **INSIDE THE PENTHOUSE**

Laurel wished she could have seen the look on those girls' faces when the two cuffs split away from one another. She hadn't been sure that she'd pull it off, fully expected that her idea wouldn't pan out, so much so that, when it did work, she stood there for several seconds looking at her hands, before finally letting out a breath and acknowledging that it had worked. She stretched her arms apart, rolled her shoulders… She'd needed to do that for so long.

She kept one of her hands at her back before bringing up the other up to eye level so she could inspect the now separated cuff. There was no guarantee her hands wouldn't snap back together if she wasn't careful, and she might not be able to separate them again. In all likelihood she wouldn't be able to remove the cuffs themselves without some assistance. That was alright though, or at least she thought it could be. She'd just have to work her way out of the apartment one-handed. She'd gotten this far already, and _that_ had been so unlikely, until it wasn't.

The door wasn't going to work, she knew that. Before she'd work up all her energy around that, she wanted to make sure she didn't have an alternative. The door was no good? Fine. She'd test the walls. Walking along, bit by bit, she used the cuff on her left hand to tap at the walls, low and high and in the middle, working away from the door. The effect was the same everywhere. Rubbery… stretchy… They looked solid, normal solid, right up until she touched them.

"Bouncy castle, great…" she sighed, then paused, thinking, then looking down at the floor. She stomped her foot a couple times, as though the fact that she'd been walking around this whole time wasn't proof enough. "I get out of this, I'm getting myself a nice ground floor apartment," she declared to no one but herself as she faced the prospect of having to break through the floor… and every other floor, possibly.

X

 **OUTSIDE THE BUILDING**

"I think they're giving up," First declared. "Several of them have left."

"Maybe they think if they leave it alone it'll just stop and go back to normal?" Second suggested.

"Maybe. It won't, but let them dream, I suppose."

"How long before we _do_ remove the field?"

"When it stops being really funny to see them try," First shrugged, smirking. "Now, oh, best look away." They both turned their faces away and closed their eyes. A few seconds later, a bright light filled the street. Agents, heroes, onlookers, all startled and cried out, shutting their eyes against the light until it died out again.

"We might be here a while," Second laughed. "Are you hungry?"

X

 **UNDERNEATH THE BUILDING**

They had found as good of a spot as they could find before they started to dig. Killer Frost had gotten them going, forming a crack in the ground to exploit with her ice. From there, they had needed to work carefully in order to keep their tunnel stable, as it grew deeper and deeper along the edge of the barrier. They knew that was where it was, because for those first few inches, that first foot, and two, and three, the ice wouldn't be able to push its way through, leaving a smooth side to their tunnel.

"How much further can it go?" she frowned, as the others continued to dig. Ronnie's arms just continued to stretch down, creating walls to hold back the earth. It would only work for so long, wouldn't it? Eventually he'd have no more length to give.

And then something had changed. Just over five feet down the hole… diverted. They were under it, under the barrier. They knew, because Killer Frost, who'd climbed into the hole to control her ice, saw it curve in. And when she was able to reach her hands underneath… she didn't change back into Amaya.

"Shadow guy, get down here!" she called up.

"Name's Obsidian," Ed Thawne told her, before disappearing out past her.

It wasn't going to be simple, they knew, but now that they had something, focusing on this one problem with a very understandable solution would be much better than staring blankly at something they couldn't understand.

The Flash and Kid Flash had been called in, with the hope that their speed could enable them to burrow into the building a lot faster and with much less destruction. And it did. Finally, they broke through the floor of what appeared to be the basement level.

"Hey, we're in," Spartan called up, and soon the Green Arrow was there, inside the basement, with him, and the speedsters, Obsdian, Hourman, Killer Frost, and the Elongated Man.

Sara looked up at the ceiling. Her sister was in there, floors and floors above, and she was down here at the bottom.

"The barrier starts again here…" Amaya noted, as the last of Killer Frost faded out of her again.

"Any of you wants to go back, I'll understand," Sara looked to everyone around her.

"Don't worry about us," Oliver promised, guessing rightly that the answer was the same all around. "Let's go find your sister."

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	17. DAY 034 (vol 2, ch 17)

_Day 34 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 17_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **LAUREL LANCE'S PENTHOUSE APARTMENT**

She had spent much too much time staring at the floor, more than any casual person ever would ever care to. All the while she had attended to the very important need of keeping her hands apart by wrapping one around her shoulder and putting the other one behind her back.

How was she going to break through that? How was she going to break through _several_ of these? She could say that, once she got through one, with any luck, she would find some of her neighbors, and get… well, a hand. But before that could happen she needed to find her way down. She did not have so many tools at her disposal, nor did she have anything that could be made into a tool, not for this. She had not paid what she'd paid for this apartment to have flimsy flooring either.

Her thoughts were momentarily invaded by her birth mother, thinking of how she would have never agreed to wreck these floors even if it meant her getting out of here. Laurel didn't have these same problems. She could rebuild… or move somewhere else, she hadn't decided.

If tools were out, then the backup was that she'd need some kind of concoction to weaken and break away a space wide enough to allow her through to the floor below. Here again, paying attention when needed would – hopefully – pay off, provided she had sufficient supplies at her disposal to safely mix up something and put it to use. Before she had started anything at all she had stood there for a minute or two, really thinking about her options.

People were trying to get in, to get them out, she could see them. But if they were making any progress she really wasn't seeing it. The only results she was seeing were her own. _She_ had separated the cuffs. And now she had a plan, so… Why put it off?

Well, one reason. Sure, she could break through her floor, she believed it. She could break through all the floors after this one if need be. But what would happen after that? What good would it all be if they couldn't get out of the building at all? Unless they went through the ground… This thing couldn't have power enough to go on forever, could it?

So it was decided then. One floor at a time… she would get herself out, and anyone else she could help do the same along the way.

It had been as difficult as she had expected it to be, but she had worked quickly and efficiently. And finally she stood watching her precious floor surrender itself to her solution, with the best mask she could manage to fasten around her face and oven mitts over her hands, the best she could do with these damned cuffs on her arms. She looked ridiculous, but what would that matter when it was working.

She'd had to do her best to estimate what would be the most convenient spot to choose as her future passage down to the floor below, not wanting to accidentally have to break through something that should not be broken… or to injure anyone on her way down.

The hole had been made, without trouble or injury, although the opening of it was greeted with a few panicked shouts from below. She sighed, trying not to laugh.

"We haven't officially met. I live upstairs. Do you mind if I come in?"

X

 **DOWN IN THE BASEMENT**

Having spent all this time only ever experiencing the building from the outside, once the small group had actually made it inside they'd found it was really no better here. Once they were firmly back within the power of the barrier, they'd found the walls as uncooperative here as they'd been outside, and the doors as well.

"This place is like the building equivalent of… me," Ronnie frowned, pushing his hand at one of the walls. "Never realized it could feel that creepy… Actually, no, there was the time, right when I first got my powers…"

"I don't think now's the time for stories," Amaya told her friend, who could only nod in understanding.

"We're going to have to find a way to keep going up," the Green Arrow announced, looking to Spartan, whose idea it had been to even try coming in through the ground. He nodded, turning back to get up through their tunnel. They were going to need tools… and floor plans, probably.

X

 **THREE FLOORS DOWN FROM THE PENTHOUSE**

After her mother's arrest, after the backlash had come down on her the way it did, Laurel had moved. That was when she'd landed in this penthouse. Her state of mind at the time had given her one thought alone about how she would proceed, living here: it would be her place of solace, and this meant as little contact as possible with her neighbors.

Today, she became very much acquainted with several of her neighbors.

On the floor just below hers, after making a careful descent through the hole she'd created, she had found a man and his elderly mother. It had taken her a minute or so in order to convince them that she had nothing to do with what was happening around them, that she was as trapped as they were, or was… If they could help her, then she might be able to get them out, too. The 'mask' over her face either kept her identity hidden, or they didn't care. She didn't give much effort toward finding out.

Either way, with the help of her downstairs neighbor, she had set about finding the spot for the next hole and, after calming the old woman's complaints about wrecking her floors, they had proceeded to break into the apartment below. Here they had come across two women and their little daughter. Once again they had needed to explain themselves, although the women appeared much more receptive to the idea than the man and his mother had done when she'd first broken through. As she realized, the women knew the man from upstairs and trusted him.

So on they'd gone to make another hole, one of the women standing back to ensure the little girl didn't get anywhere near Laurel's concoction or the hole they were about to create.

And now here they were, after what was really a lot longer than it felt, three floors down, literally and figuratively. No one was home in this one, probably a good thing for them now, although what a surprise they'd have in store upon getting back.

"Almost halfway there…" she told herself, as they prepared to make the next hole. It was true enough, as far as the floors would go, although there was no telling whether they'd be able to find a way out once they got to the bottom.

X

 **THREE FLOORS UP FROM THE BASEMENT**

All the while as they worked to open up a passage in the ceiling above them, the worried father and sister of Laurel Lance could only help in the process as best they could, all the while hoping that the jump ship would return with a solution, or that the ARGUS agents outside would finally find a way into the building that would speed up the process of evacuating the building's residents. But there was nothing, and so they had kept on working.

Eventually, they were on the ground floor, and a few of them would go about exploring this new level, hoping to find something helpful, maybe the thing that created this barrier, that transformed the walls and doors and windows, that repelled all attempts to get inside as it had done. As they did this, the others would get to work to open up the next passage.

On to the second floor they'd gone, this time landing in an apartment. Here they'd found two teenage boys and their smaller brothers. The way they'd been standing back, the older boys protectively in front, they must have stood there, waiting and watching as the tools opened up a hole in their floor. But then the Green Arrow had climbed through the ceiling from below, on to their floor, and they had recognized her from the crane and instantly relaxed.

The older boys had wanted to help them start the next hole, but instead they had been guided by the Flash and Kid Flash, down to the lobby, down to the basement, up through the tunnel and out of the building.

Now the small team had opened the way up to the third floor, learning from the previous encounter to keep on sending the Green Arrow through first, as a show that they were there to help. On the third floor they had found a man and his pregnant sister. Getting them out safely, they now faced the next ceiling, ignoring the aches and the exhaustion in their bodies.

X

 **FOUR FLOORS DOWN FROM THE PENTHOUSE**

Her arms were getting tired. The cuffs when separated almost felt heavier than they'd done when together, to the point where she might have wanted to rejoin them in order to take some of the pressure away, and that… that just made her hate them even more as she set herself to ignore the feeling and focus on the task.

The hole into the next floor had opened, and they had gone through, Laurel, the man downstairs and his mother (they'd finally convinced her to follow, after she'd sat up there, shouting down as they worked), the women and their daughter, into the next apartment down, where they were greeted by the residents, a retired couple and their dogs. It was one more floor down, and a few more to go, although they had been glad to hear the man had a great number of tools he would gladly allow them to use if they could only get to them, in storage down in the basement. They would need them once the task became more complex than holes in the floors.

"Do you hear that?" the retired woman had spoken up from where she stood, holding the women's young daughter while the others were preparing to start the next hole.

They stopped, listened. They could hear it, yes… from below. It sounded like tools.

"Someone's coming up?" her downstairs neighbor wondered aloud.

"Who lives on the next floor down?" Laurel asked.

The sound of the tools was getting louder, and then they could see a saw, working across the retired couple's floor, and they stood back. Finally, the cut section of the floor was pulled away, and a voice from below announced that they were coming up, that they were here to help… Laurel only recognized the voice even as she pulled herself up, and then there she was, crouching, staring up at her, mask and hood on… the Green Arrow… her sister.

X

 **OUTSIDE THE BUILDING**

The Waverider's jump ship sailed down from the sky, making its return from a detour into Future Quarter which had taken the trio inside much longer than they would have hoped it to take. But in the end the journey _had_ paid off, or at least they had to assume it had. There was still some slight possibility that the piece of technology they had gotten their hands on wouldn't really do what it was meant to do, and then they'd be back where they'd started out.

Leonard Snart, Ava Sharpe, and Lucy Lane emerged back out on to the street and moved toward the ARGUS agents still spread out around the building. They also saw a few people they soon guessed had to be residents. Had they gotten into the building then? Had they gone to Future Quarter for nothing? As they were told, the building continued to be what it had been, but the team of heroes who'd set to get in through the ground had gotten in and were proceeding, one floor at a time, getting residents out as they went. As best they knew, the team was somewhere halfway up by now.

"Well, maybe we can speed this up," Leonard nodded, turning to his two teammates. "Let's get this thing set up." 'And hope it works' remained unspoken, though fully implied between them.

Unbeknownst to them and several feet back of them, among the onlookers, the two breachers calling themselves First and Second had seen this return, and the tech they were setting up, as the end of their fun. Well, they had done what they had been told to do, hadn't they?

"How about a bit of sightseeing?" First asked, offering her arm to Second.

"Yes, this place has lost all its appeal suddenly," she smiled, taking it.

X

 **FOUR FLOORS DOWN FROM THE PENTHOUSE**

It could not have been more than five seconds, but for Laurel and Sara Lance it had seemed as though time had slowed to a crawl as they both stood in that apartment on the fourth floor, the revelation of the Green Arrow's identity wide open between them, along with the consequences of that knowledge.

But then it wasn't just the two of them in that moment, and so as the crawl of time was broken between them, the evacuation of the residents proceeded. Laurel had stood back through it all, waiting while the others were taken through the tool-cut holes in the floors and toward a tunnel that would escort them back into the world. They were all profusely thankful to her for now, but then she still wore the mask over her face, they still might not know who she was… So she let them go ahead, trailing behind. At each floor, she silently let Sara help her down, to the waiting hold of their father.

They were down in the lobby when they felt the barrier go down. Laurel felt it more than anyone else… Whether the two were connected or the cancellation of one had also worked on the other, she didn't know, but instantly she'd felt something release around her wrists and, shaking the oven mitt off her hand, the cuff fell heavily along with it. With a breath, she'd removed the second one, too, reaching aching and shaking hands to feel for one another, for tired wrists… She was free, in every sense of the word now. Instead of following the others who'd started through the hole into the basement, she'd turned and walked off through the door.

Outside the building, onlookers were clapping for the success of the agents, never knowing the true effort that had gone into this rescue. ARGUS agents were there to escort her to medics waiting to examine her. That could wait. She told them about the two girls who had been in her apartment. Most importantly, she'd told them about the clothes in her room.

X

 **SOME WAY AWAY FROM THE BUILDING**

It had not been difficult to track down the two girls walking about without a care in the world, when the entire city was so on alert as it was. The agents who had been dispatched to bring them in had made quick work of moving to intercept them, had them surrounded for, oh… maybe ten seconds. And then, like magic, they had disappeared… They would be searched for, yes, but in time, if they were wise, they would know they were not very likely to ever get their hands on them. They were not the top of their class for nothing.

X

 **OUTSIDE THE BUILDING**

While a few of the agents had stayed behind to finish out dealing with the building and its residents, most of the others had gone on their way. This one situation may have taken up many hours before it had been resolved, but it was still only one of many fires to put out across the city at this point. They were needed elsewhere. The onlookers had gone on their way, too, nothing left for them to see. The heroes had started to disperse, returning to whatever areas they had combing through earlier. Then there were those who stayed behind.

Quentin Lance had wanted to stay, but then the jump ship was needed, and so was he. He had told as much to Laurel, and she had told him she understood. So he had gone on, exchanging a look with his other daughter, who was presently standing not too far off, keeping an eye on her older sister while also keeping her distance. Quentin gave her a nod, and he was off with his team.

Standing there, Sara had reached to her side, taking a breath. She'd been so caught up in trying to get her sister out of there, her side had either stopped hurting or she just couldn't be bothered to notice that it did. But it was all over now, and oh, she felt it again. She bit back the pain as best she could. Laurel was looking at her, and Sara moved toward her, trying not to walk like she was in any way shamed, despite seeing the look in her sister's eyes.

"You're hurt," Laurel stated, watching her walk.

"It's nothing," Sara assured her.

"When did you get so good at lying that you can even fool yourself like that?" her sister asked, her gaze moving to the side of the green jacket sewn back together just the night before. Silence weighed between them, and Sara couldn't help but look at her sister's hands, still holding to the cramped press of the cuffs just a bit and vividly bruised.

"Laurel…"

"We're not going to do this here, now. Whatever's going on out there, it's bigger than what you did to me." So there it was, wasn't it? "Whatever you have to do, just… be careful while you do it." Sara took a breath, tipped her head in understanding.

"I will."

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	18. DAY 036 (vol 2, ch 18)

_Day 36 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 18_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

The situation at the building besieged by those Future girls had diverted a lot of power, agents and heroes both, into one place, leaving other places across the city lacking the help they could have used. Iris had been one of many working to track rising problems and redirect what assistance they could give, but each time they knew it was likely they wouldn't get to everything and everyone, and in some cases it might have ended up that people were hurt or killed because no one was there to help them.

By the time it had been handled, finally, Iris had needed a break, realizing only now just how long she'd been going non-stop. She had only just managed to find some food… or to have it found for her, as Ruby Arias had brought her a few snacks. The girl, along with Lisa Snart, had been left to step back when things had grown hectic, but they were still very much on site, and when depositing food into her hands they were downright heroic.

Her small lunch… dinner… breakfast? What time it was anymore, she couldn't say, but whatever meal this was, it would be interrupted almost immediately by an agent letting her know she was needed in 'transfers.' With a lament and a look to her food, she'd left her indeterminate meal behind to follow the agent, only understanding what he meant by transfers – or recalling that she herself had gone through here the day before – when they arrived in a room, just as a breach opened and a man stepped through.

Iris looked at him and her first impression was that she really hoped he was on their side, or else they'd be in trouble. Going off the fact that he was here, standing in ARGUS headquarters, and no one was batting an eye, he had to be one of theirs, right?

"Hello," she spoke, looking to the agent for assistance, but then the man stepped toward her. Something about his stance, his walk, was familiar, but she couldn't quite place it.

"Hello, Iris," he tipped his head, and she blinked. Yeah, she definitely knew him, she'd just never actually seen him out of his mask. This was one of her father's old associates. She'd heard him called by his other name, Deathstroke, more time than any other, but she knew his true name, too.

"John? I mean… Mr. Diggle, I…"

"John's fine," he assured her. "Lyla sent me, said you could use some help." She'd almost forgotten, with the building thing, how she'd asked Lyla for help with the kidnappings.

"Right, I… Please, follow me," she motioned for him to walk with her, as though either of them had the freedom of this place when they were both born of Haven. "So she called you, I… I wasn't sure you would…"

"Our paths crossed," was all he would say, although she felt like there was more to it.

Taking him into a room where they could talk in private, she had laid out all the information she had at her disposal. Wallace, Zari, Mag. Haven, Main, War. The duo with the big guns, the trio of meta girls and what they'd recently learned about them… She showed him the recordings, watched him watch them, as though his perspective would tell her something they didn't already know.

"They've taken three people over the past two days. I don't know if they'll take more, but they might. We don't know what they're doing with them, if they were targeted or if it was random…" She paused, sighed as she squeezed her eyes shut, knowing she wasn't going to be able to keep herself from wanting to know. "Have you seen my father recently? Do you think…"

"Do I think he has your brother?" he guessed, and she just looked at him. "The last time I saw your father, he didn't see _me_ ," John told her. "As for Wallace," he looked at the screen before them, still showing the last images they had of her brother and the other two abductees, in the moments before they were carried through the breaches. "I can't say for certain if he has anything to do with his being taken, but if he does… then Wallace won't have been harmed and you know it."

She did, of course she did. No matter what, their father would never hurt either of them. That was the one thing she could hang on to.

"I will try and find them," John told her, and she took a breath that trembled with relief.

X

 **SOMEWHERE ON MAIN EARTH**

"You're still all worked up, aren't you?" Lily could only smirk, seeing how the two of them, standing on either side of her, were still staring daggers down at the alien woman inside the room with the reporter from Main and the elevator guy from Haven. "So you had to dig your heels in a bit with this one," she shrugged. Their powers hadn't affected her the way they'd come to expect, they'd needed to pour on extra strength to bring her down, and that had not pleased them one bit.

"Please just let me rattle all of them," Jesse rolled her shoulders, electricity crackling at her fingertips. "Just a little."

"What's the matter, trouble in metaland?" a man's voice cut in, and Lily's brief amusement over her partners' annoyance was disrupted. She turned to find the two of them standing there, the _others_. "Am I hearing right that you ladies had a bit of a rough going with an alien?" Nate asked with a chuckle.

"Not that I'm in any way concerned over your wellbeing, but I'd rethink that tactic around these two right now," she told him and Raymond, tipping her head from Lyra to Jesse. Whether or not they chose to heed her advice or simply didn't care to bother, they had instead came up to stand next to the three of them, the better to see into the room, where the woman they'd grabbed from Main was sitting the young man the girls had grabbed earlier, now joined by the alien woman.

"Huh…" was Raymond's response. "So what was the problem with her?" Neither Lyra nor Jesse would own up to it, and if they thought Lily wouldn't say anything…

"Stamina, she has a lot of it. Shook off both of their powers like a tap on the shoulder." For a moment, all five stood in silence, and then Nate chuckled, and Raymond laughed, and even Lily had to smirk, earning her pointed looks from Lyra and Jesse as though she was fraternizing with the enemy. Clearing her throat, she'd looked back into the room. "They're still trying to find a way out. Vandal says our guy went climbing up a wall and 'fell' earlier. Missed that one…"

"Think they'll actually pull it off?" Lyra asked, leaning to the glass, staring at the trio presently sitting in a bit of a huddle, talking low.

"Never going to happen," Jesse vowed.

"Maybe someone should make sure they know that," Nate turned to the rest of them.

X

"How are you feeling?" Zari asked Mag, now that a little time had passed since she'd eaten and been able to regain some strength. Mag looked to her hand, squeezing it shut and opening it again. She shook her head.

"Not sure. Something about this place feels wrong." After a few moments, she'd gone about getting back on to her feet. It felt about as unpleasant as she'd expected it to, after her tussle with the girls who'd taken her, but she managed it in the end.

Wallace and Zari stayed sitting where they were at first, watching Mag as she made her rounds of the room for the first time, same as the both of them had done before. Maybe when she did it she would find something more than they had, with those heightened senses of hers. She'd explained it out as best she could, though in all likelihood they would only really grasp it when they saw her do something more than just be able to tell what quarter they were from just by their scent.

Mag went around, feeling at the walls as she went, listening, smelling… After a while, she took a breath and returned to where Zari and Wallace sat. She sat down facing them again, and as she did this, she tipped her head back just a bit and mouthed two words: _They're here._ They stared at her, confused. She sighed.

"Big guns, meta girls," she whispered. "They're somewhere outside the room. I'd put money on it." She could only assume the people she sensed near who weren't her abductors _were_ those guys who'd taken Zari, but as she'd said… she was certain.

"Does that mean they have someone else again?" Wallace wondered, scanning the floor as though he expected to find another unconscious person to have suddenly appeared without their realizing.

"I don't know," Mag shook her head.

"What do we do now?" Zari stared from one to the other.

"For now, I'd say nothing. There's more of them than of us, and we _know_ they can take us, even if it's five against three. _They_ have the higher ground. Maybe we should wait, see if they leave. When they're gone, then we can give things a try."

It made sense, they knew. Having to wait was the harder part, especially with how there were three of them now and they had more options, but she was right. They had to be smart about what they tried next, knowing what had happened the last time, and facing three powerful metas and then fire gun guy and his friend who had squeezed the breath right out of Zari all at the same time… They couldn't do that and expect to come out on the other side safely.

"Can you tell where the gun guys are from?" Wallace asked, looking for something to make the time pass. Mag nodded at once, like she already knew.

"Haven, like you."

"They are?" Wallace asked, surprised. "Then how come they weren't the ones to take me instead of those girls?" Zari and Mag considered this.

"Do you think maybe you know them and that's why they couldn't take you?" Mag suggested. Wallace shrugged.

"What if they work for your dad?" Zari tapped his arm.

"What about his dad?" Mag asked, clueless.

"It's complicated," Wallace told her, scratching at his ear. "Short of it, you don't need to meet him." He had been battling with the possibility that this _could_ have to do with his father, going back and forth on whether or not he would really be part of this, and every time something came along to show him that maybe it _was_ him, or that maybe it really wasn't him, he would be left to think about it all over again, and it would only ever leave him with a headache. Finally, he let out a sigh and asked Zari to describe the two guys as much as she could.

Bit by bit Zari had worked to create the picture of her attackers. None of them had to worry about whether she'd remember them clearly. The description she had managed to leave Lisa on her voicemail may not have been as detailed as she would have hoped to make it, but this one was not restrained by time and the presence of those two following her. She could describe anything now, down to their walks, their postures, their voices…

None of it connected with Wallace in any way familiar to him though, and while this did not confirm their being tied to his father, it didn't eliminate the possibility either. He didn't know every single person his father worked with, did he? They _could_ be working with Joseph West, but if Wallace couldn't identify them as his associates, then it went back to the question he'd put to his fellow captives. Why hadn't the Haven pair taken _him_ from Haven when it would have been easy enough.

"All this running around they've been doing, taking us from three places so distinctly separate from one another…" Zari stated, trying to look at it like she would look at a story, anything she would need to investigate. "Five of them, and maybe more for all we know, with the ability to jump from one quarter to another, one Earth to the other, taking unrelated people from unrelated places, dumping us here in this…" she motioned around the room. "They give us food, more than enough. First aid kit when we have injuries, a toilet… for that," she pointed dismissively toward the 'bathroom.'

"Not overly comfortable but still tended to," Mag nodded.

"Yes," Zari agreed. They sat quietly for a few moments, thinking it over. It would suggest, maybe, hopefully, that at some time they might let them go, but the confusion this added to the question only made her want to keep quiet, because it just… If they were going to let them go, then why take them at all? They were already so busy, on Main with the breachers, in War with the Mist weapon, and then on top of that there would be them, getting taken, one more thing, like last straw and…

"What is it?" Wallace asked when Zari bowed her head, slinging her arms on top like she was trying to hide for a second, before she looked at them again.

"I think… they're looking for something," she spoke very quietly. "They're looking for something, and they're making damned sure everyone else is too busy to bother noticing."

"And taking us…" Mag started, following Zari's idea but still missing a part of it.

"I don't think they know where it is, which quarter or Earth… How do you throw off the scent so no one knows what you really want?"

Whether or not this was actually the case, they couldn't say, but in the silence that stretched on following Zari's hypothesis, it did feel like it all fit much too much for it not to be the truth. And as the seconds stretched on, of all the possible responses it could have caused, especially with how she'd been saying they should wait until their captors had gone, Mag had gotten back up on her feet and turned to address the point, they figured, where she thought the guys and girls were watching them from.

"Hey, Water Witch, I know who you are," she shouted. "Your father runs Stein Labs, doesn't he? Now how long do you think it's going to take before some of those guys out there figure out you took me, took us," she gestured wide toward where Wallace sat, although both he and Zari went to stand now, debating whether they could get her to stop. "Tell you what though, _they're_ not here right now, but _I_ am, and so are they," she indicated Wallace and Zari. "And before all this is over, you'll be eating that grin of yours."

She stopped, and the room was quiet again.

"What was that?" Wallace whispered at Mag.

"Probably a stupid move that won't do anything, but if it does, then I would love nothing more than to throw a wrench in their plans," she shook her head, staring at that opposite wall like she was just waiting, waiting…

Whatever they thought might happen next, which ranged from nothing at all, to the noise that had baited Wallace into proving he wasn't really hurt after his 'fall,' to a full on attack… That wasn't what they got, no. Instead, they were treated to more displays of how fitting Zari's description of this place as a nightmare room was spot on. All of a sudden, they were standing in different spots throughout the room, even though they didn't remember moving. Wallace was a few steps of where he'd been before, Zari was in one corner of the room, and Mag was in another. Then in the next seconds they'd moved again… and they were alone.

Wallace saw himself alone. Zari and Mag were gone. Zari was alone, too. Mag was alone… Then each one found that the room had shrunk to barely the space that surrounded their bodies, as though they were squeezed inside a tube. Wallace was vaguely called back to the feeling of the elevator, but this was worse, and for a moment he genuinely felt trapped. Zari closed her eyes, tried not to think of the nearness of the walls. Mag looked around, turned around, waited…

"It's not real!" she shouted, to the others, wherever they were. "Do you hear me? Zari? Wallace? It's not real! It's the room, it's them! They're just messing with you!"

The walls were back to normal again. The others were back, too. But then they weren't alone. The three meta girls were in the room. The two guys were there, and yes, those were some big guns alright. One was trained on Zari, the other on Wallace, and standing on either side of her were the vertigo inducing girl and the electrical one, too. Stood at the heart of all of this was the one she'd dubbed the Water Witch, Martin Stein's daughter. She stood tall, her hands joined behind her back.

"So… you wanted to talk?" she asked, giving Mag this grin she intended to take from her. "Then let's talk."

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	19. DAY 038 (vol 2, ch 19)

_Day 38 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 19_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

To the best of her abilities, Iris had gotten back to work and tried to put her brother and the others out of her thoughts. They were coming to the end of two days of this breacher invasion, and it was giving not one hint of slowing down or coming back under control. Still more would appear throughout the city, even as others were being returned to where they'd come from. They could never really feel as though they were making any real progress.

But at least she could get just a bit of reassurance now that they had someone looking for her brother. John Diggle was out there now, she wasn't sure where exactly, seeing as he had his very own piece of tech to cross from one Earth to the other. She didn't know where he'd gotten it and how, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know. He was out there, and he was looking for Wallace and Zari and Mag, and she was surprisingly secure in the belief that he _would_ find them, and he would bring them home.

What she hadn't seen coming, at this time of the evening, was for ARGUS headquarters to receive a visitor. She might not even have known if she hadn't overheard an agent walking behind where she sat, saying how the woman had shown up, 'demanding' to see the director, or 'Miss Michaels' if she was available.

"Hey," Iris had called over to the agent. "Someone was asking for Lyla?"

When she found out who it was, it had taken all of twenty seconds for her to move from her desk and hurry off to find the woman. She was pacing along, heels clicking along to the firm press of her feet.

"Excuse me?" Iris spoke up, and the woman turned to her. "You're Nora Allen, aren't you?"

"I told your colleague, I will stay here until I speak to your director. If he will not be bothered, then I will see Lyla Michaels."

"Lyla isn't here, and the director… he's just gone home after being here near two days straight. The assistant director's here though… I think… I don't actually work here, I'm just sort of a… an extra pair of hands. She couldn't figure out why she would be here like this, but then she thought back… Yesterday, she had put out that message to tell the people of the city to stay indoors if they could. And another thing she knew about that had to do with Nora Allen, or her company, NorCo. That was where… "You're here about Zari Tomaz, aren't you?"

"I can't prove it for certain," Nora Allen started, with just a trace of unease, "But I think something may have happened to her."

"I…" Iris hesitated. The whole thing hadn't really gotten out, there'd been no time, and the people of the city had plenty on their minds as it was. She might have gone to the woman about the case, feeling she'd be just the type to move heaven and earth to find her, but then that only went so far when there were two Earths to move, didn't it? "I need to show you something."

She'd played the video of Zari's taking for Nora Allen, the whole scene playing outside the NorCo building and further up the street, until the unconscious Zari had been carried through a breach. Nora Allen had stood transfixed, watching it all happen, and when it was over, she'd looked like she might have been ill.

"Have her abductors been identified?" she asked after a few moments.

"Not exactly. All we know is they're from Haven Quarter… on Breach Earth," Iris told her, then after a moment. "She's not the only one to be taken. There's an alien woman who was also abducted… and my younger brother, too. Someone is looking for them now, but… with everything that's happening here, and over there, everyone is just… Well, he's on his own. But if they can be found, he'll find them. I trust that, and you should, too."

"It's not getting any better, is it?" Nora Allen spoke evenly, looking around. Even from where they stood, removed from most of what was happening around headquarters, it was plain to see that they were all in constant activity.

Iris wanted to tell her that it _would_ get better, in time. But she'd seen the screens all day, the new arrivals, and it was hard not to keep on feeling a bit discouraged. If only things could get better over on Breach, maybe all of those doing their part out there could come and lend them a hand here… Then again, all of them had to be hoping for the same thing in reverse.

X

Crossing the breach back on to Main had felt a bit underwhelming. Yes, they had found out some information that, in the long run, might have helped them finally track down Malcolm Merlyn and his associates, but it didn't feel that they had gotten any closer, did it?

Felicity, Dinah, Tommy and Lyla walked through ARGUS headquarters now, and it felt almost as though they'd gone and taken a day off in the middle of the worst possible time, even though it hadn't exactly been unwarranted. They were still very much locked on to the certainty that this whole situation with the breachers went back to Merlyn somehow. Merlyn, and West, and their unknown partners…

They couldn't really know what had been going on while they were away in Haven, but now that they were back and they saw… The agents were still going about like they were on high alert. The lines of beds for the injured, the medics moving among them, the great map and all the areas showing breacher activity… It was just as active as it had been before they'd left.

"I should go and check in," Dinah told the others. "I'll come back and let you know what I've heard," she added, looking to their little team. They hadn't come into this expecting to be pulled together in this way, but now here they were. Even as things went on, they would still have Malcolm Merlyn on the brain.

"I'll go see if I can find Iris, she'll need to know what we found out," Tommy detached himself next, leaving Felicity and Lyla alone to stand and wait.

Felicity wished it could have been her and her team today. This was in no way related to the team she _did_ have today, far from it. Dinah, Tommy, Lyla… They had been valued allies to her today, and they would continue to be. But Merlyn… that mission… He had been theirs to find, to capture and return, and they hadn't been able to do that for so long, for reasons beyond their control in the beginning, and after that… after…

Part of her felt like they had stopped trying after a while. She'd been going around, believing she couldn't find him because he'd disappeared, but now thinking back… She should have tried harder, should have pushed further… Even if they had to go one quarter at a time… they could probably have found him, couldn't they? Going off of everything they had seen, and everything Tommy had told them, he hadn't exactly been living under a rock all this time. He hadn't been in the public eye, but near enough.

So why hadn't they dug deeper? Why hadn't they kept going instead of staying here and… playing heroes? And now… Even if they did find him, what were they going to do with him? Bring him back? After all these years, even though that was what they'd been meant to do all along, the years of their absence would speak for themselves. And she was ashamed to say she didn't think herself capable of facing the inquiries. _What took you so long, Captain?_

"Are you alright?" She looked over to where Lyla was looking at her, and she felt herself nod, although she wasn't too sure about what her face looked like as she did. "It's been a long day. But there's still tomorrow." It was meant to be encouraging, but the thing was that, now that they'd returned from their day in Haven, she wasn't sure _what_ they would do next. Would they just go back, keep trying? Or would they stay here, to help the others?

"I don't think we should wait until tomorrow, I… We should speak to the Queens about what we've found so far." _And what we haven't found._

"They'll have gone home by now," Lyla reminded her. "It can wait until morning." To her, it felt more that Lyla was telling her it _would_ have to wait, but was trying to be kinder about it.

"I know… I… I'll see you then. When Agent Drake gets back, will you tell her I'll see her back at the apartment?" She left headquarters after that, taking off into the sky as soon as she'd cleared the doors. She needed to fly, needed to clear her head.

X

Ruby Arias had done her best all day not to get in anyone's way. She understood why she had to be here, and although she couldn't help but worry for her mother while she was out there, she knew she needed to be able to concentrate on what was happening, to help people and stop the breachers.

It hadn't been so bad, being stuck in ARGUS headquarters. And it wasn't as though she had no one there with her. There was Lisa, of course, and though she was only a friend of her mother's, she had gotten to feel like an aunt to her. Today, her aunt was worried, which was more than understandable. Zari was missing… She was like an aunt, too, the whole group had become family to her since they'd come into her life. She only wanted to know she was safe now.

Other than Lisa, she had met Iris West early on, and she had been getting to interact with her throughout the day. Ruby liked Iris, and knowing that her brother was missing, just like Zari, the two of them had come to be that much more bonded.

At some time about mid-day, right around the time they'd started to hear about that building where a bunch of people were trapped because of some weird sort of barrier, Ruby had been drawn in to follow the progress of the situation, the efforts to free the people in the building. In the process, she had come to meet another person who, like Iris, wasn't an agent here at ARGUS but who had been pulled into helping them because of the circumstances. Her name was Cait Snow.

Ruby had noticed her when something had caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. The woman's hand was just sort… not shaking, more like vibrating. When Cait had caught her looking, Ruby had made herself look away, not wanting to come off like she was staring.

"Sorry, nervous habit," Cait had told her though, and so Ruby had looked at her again. When she'd asked why her hand did that, she'd found out Cait Snow was a speedster. Wondering why she wasn't out there like the others, Cait had replied that it was a long story, though she'd said it with a small sort of smile, and Ruby still didn't know exactly what that was about, but either way she had spent the next long while watching the proceedings down at the besieged building. As it turned out, Cait's husband was one of the ones trying to get the residents out. He was a meta, like her.

She'd gotten to meet the guy, when he another of their team had returned to headquarters a little while ago. He'd shown her what he could do, and much as she'd thought she'd be freaked out, she'd just laughed. Then Lisa had come over, telling her that her mother and the others had just returned, too, and she'd hurried off to find her mother, diving into her arms.

"Missed you, too, kiddo," her mother had smiled, hugging her tight. Ruby had looked up at her again, noticing now what looked like a bruise still coming in, on the side of her mother's face. "Don't even think about it, I'm alright," her mother would only say, and Ruby frowned. How could she _not_ worry. "Tell me about your day. Did you stay out of trouble?"

"Sure, I did," Ruby promised, as their little group moved to reunite with Lisa, who was now talking with Cait and her people. As they approached, she realized they were talking about Zari, about how she was still missing, how they hadn't found anything new, although there was now apparently a third person missing along with Iris' brother and Zari… and they'd gotten someone to look for them.

"You did?" Jim asked, and Cait had nodded to him. "I figured all the agents were on the breachers situation."

"He's not an agent," Cait explained. "He came over here from Haven Quarter, I heard. I think he was Lyla's husband, or a friend, I'm not sure. But they believe he'll be able to find them."

"Heard you two were at that building today," Kendra looked to Ronnie and Amaya. "It took away your powers?"

"There was a barrier, once we crossed it they were gone, then once we crossed back…" Amaya explained, punctuating the end with a motion rather than a demonstration.

"How much longer do you think this is going to go on?" Ronnie asked them all. Two whole days had gone down, and it was not showing signs of slowing down. They were really starting to feel it.

"I don't know, but it still feels like we're missing something," Samantha shook her head, all the while keeping her arm around her daughter.

"What do you mean?" Cait asked.

"Just that… the breachers keep coming, and coming, and we deal with them, sure, but then more come, and we deal with those… and it's not normal, to have this many of them at once, so there has to be a reason, except… What's the reason? What's it all for?"

X

It seemed inescapable that not only would she go pull some stitches… again… but then to top it off there would be her father again, coming along while Michael was dealing with her bandages again. Sin, guarding the door as she had done the night before, had let him through, which Sara might have argued against, but then she knew her friend and partner had done it for the right reasons. It didn't make seeing the barely concealed worry in his face any easier to see.

"May I?" Quentin had turned to Michael, who'd given her a look before getting up and leaving the room. With a sigh, she'd waited as he came and sat on the stool and took over patching her up. "You need time to heal," he said, knowing as well as she did that the words came down a bit empty, considering the way things had been over the past two days, but that they still needed to be said.

"I will," she promised, though again they both knew that the unspoken end to that sentence was 'when this is all over.' Neither spoke again until after he'd finished and she could once again don her disguise as the Green Arrow. Before slipping on the mask though, she'd stopped and sat down again, looking to her father. "Did you talk to her?"

"Got her set up at the house until she finds another place to stay," he informed her. "I'd suggest she stay with you, but…"

"Doubt that'll ever happen after today," Sara frowned to herself.

"Sweetheart, you just need to give her time."

"Not with this. Not unless I can make it right for her that I got her mother thrown in jail, that I made her a… a pariah by association. And I can't do that."

"No, probably not. But she's your sister, the two of you… You made her feel at home faster than your mother or I ever could. And when she lost you…" He grew quiet again for a moment, bowing his head against the memory of losing her, too. "Well, we both coped the best way we could. I ended up on the Waverider, and she… she found her birth mother." _Who got me thrown on Breach Earth… among other things._ "The point is… she'll be angry for a while, but it won't last, it can't. No matter what."

Sara didn't say anything in return. She hoped he was right. She really, truly hoped he was right.

"Did the rest of the day go alright with your team?" she asked, mostly to fill the silence, but also for wanting to know.

"More of the same," he shrugged. "Reminds me a lot of when you two girls were little. I'd pick your toys, put them back when they belonged. Then I'd come back, only to find you'd taken out _more_ toys and left those lying around, too. An endless stream of misplaced toys."

"In our defense, the look on your face was usually the real payoff," she smiled.

Soon, both Team Waverider and Team Arrow were leaving ARGUS headquarters for the night. It had gotten late, and they would go and sleep the day away, in anticipation of another just like this. They were all of them bound to their own homes, or someone else's home, or a jump ship, or a clock tower… Sara might have been talked into spending the night at her father's place, but then she knew her sister would be there, and she wasn't about to spring a confrontation on…

As they were walking down the steps, Sara looked down to find someone stood there, waiting, staring back up at her. _Laurel…_ She had told her before that they wouldn't have The Conversation, just after they'd gotten her out of her building. Now her sister was here, so it looked as though the time had come for them to have it out. Sara might have preferred getting more stitches compared to this, but… she had no choice.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	20. DAY 040 (vol 2, ch 20)

_A/N: Just to let you know, there_ will _be some cheat sheets/reference things put at your disposal in the week or so to come. I'd hoped to get something set up for so long and never got around to it until now, but it will finally be coming if you can hold out until then :)_

* * *

 _Day 40 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 20_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **HOME OF SAMANTHA & RUBY ARIAS**

 **NIGHT OF DAY TWO**

Jim had gone home, Kendra had gone home. Lisa was crashing on the couch, and that was that; she never liked to be alone at a time like this… Not that times like _this_ were a common affair, but there _had_ been other times where they found themselves turning in for a night, all the while knowing whatever they had come home from that night was not over and would be there waiting for them again in the morning.

Samantha had seen her daughter to bed before making for her own room, stopping off in her bathroom to inspect the bruise on her face, touching it gingerly, frowning at herself when it hurt.

"Did you ever get really hurt before?" She startled, turning around.

"Ruby…" she breathed, moving over to her daughter. "Didn't you just get into bed, you?" She was trying to joke, but she could see the look on her daughter's face, the 'I'm not a kid anymore, don't try to play me like I am' look she was getting way too good at using. "I didn't want to get you worrying about this," Samantha sighed, brushing Ruby's hair with her fingers. "You know, you might feel all grown up now, but you're still the same girl to me you always were…"

"… ever since I was right here," Ruby rattled off, pointing to her mother's stomach, like she'd heard it a hundred times and then some.

"And I've always wanted to protect you just the same," Samantha smirked.

"You're just keeping me in the dark. That's not protecting me. Did you ever try and do anything with your eyes closed? You just trip and fall and get hurt." Samantha blinked, her daughter's words turning about in her head. Alright, so maybe she really wasn't so small anymore.

"Alright, I'll make you a deal. I can't promise you there won't be times where I won't keep things to myself, like I'm sure _you_ don't tell me everything that's going on in _your_ life," she tipped her head and kept her eye. "But from now, I promise I will tell you what's going on when I'm out there being all…" She stopped, sighed. "I really need a name…" she told herself, before giving her daughter a smile. "What do you think, is that fair?"

"Fair," Ruby declared, smiling back.

X

 **IN THE CITY**

 **MORNING OF DAY THREE**

It had never been an easy thing, to go out there and face potential danger, knowing there was Ruby waiting back home, with no idea that on any of those given nights, something might happen and her mother might never get back to her. At no time had Samantha's concerns been toward her own life. They had always, _always_ been about her daughter and what would happen to her if she was gone. Oh, she never believed she would be alone. If something happened to Samantha, Ruby Arias would have a cluster of aunts and uncles to hold her up and see her through life; that was never even a question. She might never have even attempted anything close to what she did out there if it wasn't for that.

Would it have been different if Ruby had both her father and her mother to look after her? Oh, of course. But then she didn't, did she? And much as Samantha could regret that for her, deep down she knew… it could never have been any other way. Ruby's father was just… the least said, the better.

Running around with Jim and Kendra on this new day, thinking of Ruby back at ARGUS along with Lisa, she still thought about the talk they'd had the night before. She'd promised she would keep her informed from now on, and she would keep that promise. Still, deep down she wished she'd never had to open that door with her. In a perfect world, her daughter would never have to get near any of this. In a perfect world… as though there would ever be such a thing. This had always been and would always be the kind of world they lived in… Maybe it was time she owned up to it. Maybe now, the two of them could hold on to one another as they walked through that world, rather than to be held at arm's length… or with their eyes closed, bumping and falling.

X

 **HOME OF RONNIE RAYMOND & CAIT SNOW**

 **NIGHT OF DAY TWO**

Getting home for that second night, with her and Ronnie – and their 'guard' Amaya downstairs – coming off of that day's events, it felt like even without the visible evidence of it, her hands were still 'going all hummingbird,' as Ronnie might say. Everything that was happening out there, it felt like at any moment she would lose her cool and just need to run out there, to do _something_ to help. Except she couldn't… not now, not for months to come…

Maybe it was just the vast expanse of this situation that made it worse, maybe if it was just any day she would be better able to keep herself minded, but… who was she kidding? It had been one thing when she didn't have her powers, to stay back while the others were out there. But that wasn't the case, not anymore. Now she was a speedster, and she could do so much… or she could. Now all she could do was stay back, out of harm's way, as though the stress of having to stay back was doing her any more good.

"Hey…" Ronnie's hand was at her back, and she turned to him. "You looked really far away there, where did you go?"

"Didn't go anywhere… That's kind of the problem," she pointed out.

"I know," he sighed. "I wish it didn't have to be like this. Maybe… maybe we can see if Barry and Eobard will come back to this side of the breach. Add a little Firestorm to our lineup."

"They need them over there, too," Cait shook her head, appreciating the sentiment but knowing it wouldn't solve anything. "I'll be alright," she promised, trying to sound as convinced as her words claimed.

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

 **MORNING OF DAY THREE**

"Morning, Cait!" She looked up, seeing Ruby Arias walk in, Lisa Snart not far behind.

"Hey…" Cait gave them a smile in greeting.

The circumstances had made it so that Ruby was not the only child on the premises today, as she hadn't been the day before either. Agents, some of them, had requested to bring in their families for safety's sake, breachers running around as they were. Some others had sent their families out of the city despite not being able to go along with them. In Ruby's case, it wasn't that her mother worked for ARGUS, but then for the service Samantha Arias was giving them, on this day and those preceding, they could hardly refuse her.

"I heard you commandeered a microphone yesterday," Cait told her, making the girl bite back a smiled. "I get it," Cait went on. "It's not easy being in here when the ones we care about are out there." Ruby shook her head; it really wasn't easy at all.

"I wish I had powers," she sighed. "Then I could go and help my mom."

"You don't need powers to help," Cait replied. "Your mother doesn't have powers, does she?"

"No, I guess…"

"Come on, do you feel like helping me out today?" Cait offered, and Ruby accepted at once. Maybe this could benefit the both of them…

X

 **THE BREACH SHIP WAVERIDER'S JUMP SHIP**

 **NIGHT OF DAY TWO**

As unintendedly gained as it was, Leonard Snart's crew mattered a great deal to him. They were about the only people he would let anywhere near his ship, except maybe his sister, while he wasn't on it or anywhere near it. Now, after two days of their all being split of, half on the main ship over on Breach, and the rest of them with only the jump ship here on Main, he needed to know how things were faring with the other half. He'd tried, the night before, but evidently they'd been in the thick of it because he'd gotten nothing more than vague details.

When he got in touch with the main ship, greeted by Winn Schott, the third of their ARGUS agents, he quickly got the sense that, while he would take the time to speak with him, things hadn't exactly quieted down on their end of things either. There had been an attack on War, on the WQI.

"How is the city holding up?" he asked. He knew what a strike on that place of all places would do to them. The look on Winn's face said it all: it was not going well. He didn't bother to ask about Mag, though he'd heard about her being taken. They would have been as helpless about this as they were about helping the city recover from the attack.

"All signs point to there being another attack before long, we're doing what we can to stop it happening, but everyone's just…" he shook his head in desperation. Then he stopped, looking off somewhere Leonard couldn't see, as though talking with someone off camera, with a motion that looked to Leonard like 'you want to talk to him?' "Right, well, on another note, there's something else you should know about, uh… it's about Cat."

"Is she malfunctioning?" Leonard asked.

"No, uh… no… the thing is, she's sort of… a person," Winn revealed. "And when I say she's a person, I don't mean she was just a voice on the ship and suddenly she became a person, I mean she's always been a person, and she's been here, without us knowing, and, well…"

"Alright, take a breath, Agent Schott, you're about to pass out," called the voice they had all heard, day after day, aboard the ship, only now as she said it she stepped into view, a woman now staring back at him. "Good evening, Leonard," she nodded, and he stared back, jaw hanging just a bit, speechless.

"Right?" Winn nodded over to him, before the woman gave him a look and he walked out of sight, leaving Leonard and the woman who was apparently Cat their AI.

"I guess I should introduce myself," she spoke with a knowing smile. "My name is Catherine Grant, and I created the ship you… liberated out of time. I'm sure in time you and I will be able to have a lengthy discussion about how you inadvertently kidnapped me that night, although in truth I did sort of enable you to do it, when I pretended to be an AI and showed you how to fly the ship. You didn't think you'd just up and figured out how to control a time ship like the Waverider in the span of five minutes, did you?"

"I guess you could say I figured chance was on my side," he admitted.

"Maybe it was… I was." He was silent for a few moments, and the look she gave him felt as though she could read his mind. Maybe she could, because the next thing she'd told him was exactly what he'd been thinking about. "If you're afraid I'll take the ship back now that you know about me, you don't need to worry. I have no intention of returning any time soon."

X

 **IN THE CITY**

 **MORNING OF DAY THREE**

Greeting his team that morning, a part of him had felt he couldn't tell them what he'd learned the night before. It was not the kind of thing to unpack when they were in the middle of a breacher invasion. They were smart, all of them, they'd start asking questions, and he wouldn't be able to lie to them, not about this. He knew better than to think it wouldn't explode and change and wreck everything beyond repair. So he tried to keep it as brief as possible, reserving the full, detailed story for later.

He told them how the others had discovered a woman hidden aboard the ship, who had been passing herself off as an AI, that she was their Cat, except that she was actually called Catherine Grant. Like the rest, they had made the connection to Grant Innovations, the markings being all over the ship as they were. He assured them he didn't know she had been there, and his face must still have shown some of the genuine shock of the night before, because they didn't question it even a little.

"I would ask that we keep this between us for the time being," he went on, turning a look to Agents Sharpe and Lane without needing to specify 'don't tell ARGUS.' Had this been four years ago again, when they hardly knew one another, he might have been met with a categorical refusal on the two women's part. But things were different now, and despite all previous expectations, he had earned enough of their respect that they freely consented.

Inevitably so, he knew the day's proceedings, more ferrying of breachers back to their respective quarters, would feature a lot of talk between the five of them, as they processed the 'Cat thing.'

X

 **HOME OF OLIVER & THEA QUEEN**

 **NIGHT OF DAY TWO**

It was their second night coming home with their mother and father along with them, and it had yet to stop feeling as strange as it had the night before. Not bad, just… strange. Maybe it was that they were all so busy, running around all day – literally – that there was just no time to really stop, and breathe, and take it in.

Now here they were, reunited so late in the evening that it would have seemed as though they'd only head off to sleep and see each other again in the morning, but then they'd get back here, and there'd be no breachers, no running, no suits, just a brother and sister and their long believed dead parents, and after that… sleep was just not part of the plan anymore.

They had been sharing stories now, jumping around from recent to distant memories and back again, when there was a knock at the door.

They'd looked to one another, the same questions playing over their faces. Friend or foe?

Oliver had gotten up, keeping quiet as he approached the door, entirely braced to fight, or run. But then looking through the peephole he recognized two of the four people standing outside the apartment. One was an ARGUS agent, though he didn't remember her name, and the other, the blonde just at her side, he thought had been with her when they'd come through into ARGUS the day before.

"Mr. Queen, I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour. My name is Dinah Drake, we met briefly?" the agent had introduced herself when he'd opened the door.

"Yes," he confirmed, shaking her hand. He looked to the blonde with the glasses again. He'd definitely seen her before, but it wasn't…

"Felicity Smoak," she'd introduced herself now, and he'd shaken _her_ hand, too. She must have caught on to the confused stare on him because, after a moment, she'd looked to either end of the hallway before pulling her glasses up and away from her face, and then he knew where he'd seen her… They'd both been out there the day before, the blockade of breachers, only then she'd been flying, she'd been… _Supergirl._ "So you're the…" She didn't say the word, but she made a motion with her hand to indicate running fast.

"Out here it's Oliver," he nodded. "Oliver Queen."

"Can we come in?" Agent Drake asked, and he stepped aside, admitting the four visitors. Once they were inside and he'd closed the door, he'd been introduced to the third woman, Lyla Michaels, and then there was the man… Hadn't he been talking with Thea earlier?

"Hey… I'm Tommy Merlyn," he introduced himself, and, off the startled look on Oliver's face, "Yeah, you'll have heard about my father. Don't worry, we don't get along." Now that he heard him talking though, he recalled, the one who'd said he couldn't believe he was meeting them. He didn't have his helmet now, but it was him. _Guardian._

"Okay," was all he could say.

The introductions and re-introductions had carried on as Thea and their parents had come along, too. There was the briefest moment when Thea had caught Tommy's eye, and he understood. She hadn't told Oliver about this unknown brother of hers yet, and she didn't plan on doing that tonight. He had no intention to force her into anything she wasn't ready for, so that'd be that. For the time being, he would just be Tommy Merlyn, son of Malcolm and ally to the cause.

Both Oliver and Thea still had no real idea of Supergirl's origins, her reason for being on Earth, not until she'd explained it out for them, which then led into sharing how the four visitors had been off in Haven today, attempting to find anything that would lead them to Malcolm. They hadn't found him, and as of yet it still felt unlikely they were getting any closer. They had wanted to tell them as much, seeing as it involved them, some more than others.

The only other thing they could really pass on to them was what they had learned so far about their associates. Of the four who had been sighted by John Diggle interacting with Merlyn, they only had a name for one. Joseph West.

"Yes, we know who he is," Moira had stated, Robert and Tommy reacting equally. "You'll have spoken with his daughter, Iris."

"Oh, right…" Thea blinked, thinking of the girl who'd been in their ears for the past two days, directing them to where they needed to be.

Off the descriptions of the other three, the Queens had nothing they were able to give to help identify any one of them. Their association with Malcolm Merlyn was what it was, even less so where Joseph West was concerned, but beyond that… They looked to Tommy, thinking maybe he would have seen anyone that would match any of those descriptions back in the days where he still lived at home or even visited his father. But he had nothing. According to Lyla, they'd asked Iris the same, but she hadn't known either.

"So what happens now?" Robert asked.

"We will keep searching for him," Felicity declared, vowed. She didn't know how, but she was going to do it. They could hear it in her voice, they could see it in her eyes. She had waited, and waited, but now the waiting was over. She would find Malcolm Merlyn.

X

 **IN THE CITY**

 **MORNING OF DAY THREE**

Thea had been outrunning her brother for a while now, although she knew if he actually wanted to he could outrun _her_ without trying. This morning, he wasn't trying though, so she was ahead of him, and it was almost just as well. So long as he was behind her, it didn't matter what she was thinking about and whether it would show on her face or not, so she could go back and think about the night before… again.

She didn't know why she hadn't told Oliver yet. There had been chances, more than once. Two nights ago… yesterday morning… at that building, while they were stuck waiting for backup… last night… last night most of all, when Tommy was right there. But then she couldn't make herself do it. She couldn't make herself tell him how their mother had had an affair with this Malcolm guy and that she, Thea, was _his_ daughter and not Robert's, and that Tommy was also her brother. It was already so much for her, and she didn't know what it would be like for him…

But now… The longer she would put it off, it would only get worse, wouldn't it?

"Hey," Oliver called after her, and she hit the brakes, slowing until they both stood.

"What?" she asked, looking around, trying to see what he had seen. A breacher?

"I was just going to say maybe we should be careful today, in case we run into any more of those Future Quarter barriers." He hadn't meant for her to stop, and now that had only drawn attention to the fact that she was distracted. "You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," she shrugged, taking off again.

X

 **OUTSIDE ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

 **NIGHT OF DAY TWO**

This wasn't going to be some casual sit down sort of conversations then. They just stood there, two sisters, one masked, one not… The Green Arrow and Laurel Lance… After a moment, Sara had quickly pulled off her jacket, hood and mask now leaving behind the blond vigilante in a t-shirt that showed where she had bled, pulling her stitches. Laurel's eyes had gone there, and for a moment her hard set anger seemed to surrender to sisterly concern, the two extremes wavering until they settled into a mix.

"What happened there?" she asked.

"Breacher, last night," Sara told her. "It's fine."

"Doesn't look it," Laurel declared.

Silence stretched on. Sara could see both of her sister's wrists were wrapped in bandages, too, after their encounter with the Future girls' cuffs. She wanted to say something, but all of a sudden she just didn't know how. She had been living for too long already with the dread of this conversation ever happening, because no matter how she pictured it in her head, it always seemed to end the same, with her losing her sister. Their father insisted that she wouldn't, that in the end they would be alright, but he wasn't here right now, wasn't feeling the tension between them…

"I want you to tell me what happened to you," Laurel started now, and as Sara looked at her, she hesitated, looking down at herself. "I don't mean about the blood, yesterday. What happened to you when you went away? You never said, and now maybe I know why. You became… her. The Green Arrow." The way she said the words, there was no doubt how she felt about her alter ego.

"It wasn't that simple," Sara assured her.

"Well, give it a shot, we'll see." _Right…_ Sara looked around, wondering what made her feel most exposed, standing there with bow, quiver, jacket and mask gathered in her hands, the blood on her shirt, standing near ARGUS headquarters, or the look on her sister's face as she stared at her.

She couldn't sidestep the fact that this all went back to Laurel's birth mother… again… and the moment she'd bring her up, it would get Laurel's defenses up, she knew it would.

"I was on Breach Earth," she started.

"You went to Breach Earth, that's…"

"No, I didn't _go_ to Breach Earth, I was taken there. A man came up behind me that day, and he knocked me out, and next thing I knew I was somewhere else, somewhere that… it looked so much like here at first, but it wasn't, and I figured it out, but… I didn't even know that was a thing back then, so I thought I was just losing my mind. I couldn't find you, or Dad, or Mom… There was our house, but other people lived in it. I tried to look us up but it was like we didn't exist. I barely had any money on me, and any ID I had was for someone who didn't exist there.

"I burned through the money before long, and after that, I…" Even now, thinking back to that period, the early weeks she'd spent in Haven… when it had been anything but a haven to _her_ … It would leave her shivering. "I was scared if anyone tried to identify me, and they couldn't find me, they'd start talking to me and think I was crazy, and back then I thought I had to be, being in that place." She'd been alone… starving… and she'd gotten sick, and then… he'd found her.

"There was a man, he took me in. John, that was his name. I lived in his house for about a year after that." She made it sound easier than it had really been. It had taken her a while to trust him, and could it not? For all she knew, he might have been helping her for motives that were not nearly as kind as he made them appear. And as always she feared that one wrong move would get her locked up. "After that year, he'd helped me get an ID together, and I had some money. So I got an apartment. I lived quietly for a while, and then…"

She paused. This was it. This was the moment where she had no choice but to bring up her mother.

"And then?" Laurel asked, and Sara looked at her. The stern look on her face at this point felt barely like a placeholder, the true emotions underneath being unknowable as Sara continued to unfurl her story.

"And then the man came again, the one who'd brought me there. He didn't think I'd remember him, but I did. He tried to come after me, but we were near to John's, and he came, and he got the man talking." That was when she'd really started to understand the kind of man John Diggle was, in more ways than one. "That was when I found out I was on another Earth, a version of it about as close to the other one as they came. That was why I didn't exist here, none of us did. I wasn't crazy." She breathed. "He finally said he brought me there because he needed to get rid of me."

"Why?" Laurel frowned, confused. Sara looked her in the eye.

"Because she told him to do it." Silence, stretching over the seconds, and then it clicked. There it was, the rounding in her shoulders. "The day I disappeared, I was on my way to see you, because I'd found out… the very thing your mother was arrested for five years later. That was all I was going to do, I was going to tell you and let you do what you wanted with it. But then she had me thrown away." She couldn't hide her anger here. "It was a good thing she got that man of all people to 'take care' of me, because if she hadn't picked the one guy who didn't want to make a mess and tossed people on Breach instead, I would probably be long dead and buried."

'That man of all people' hadn't gotten any thanks for his choice in the end, but the least said on that the better.

"After that day, when I realized what had really happened to me, that was the day John started to train me. I knew that one day, someday, when I was ready, I would go back, that I would make things right, and that was what I did. I didn't know… I didn't know you and her had gotten close in that time, I really didn't, and by the time I did… it was too late. The wheels were in motion and there was no stopping them. I couldn't change the fact that she'd done what she'd done, before me, after me… She deserved what she got, but you… you didn't deserve any of it, and I wish I could change it, Laurel, you have no idea how much I wish that…

"All I ever wanted to do, since before I ended up in Haven, was to protect you… my big sister… my best friend…" She didn't know when the tears had started, but there they were, quiet but heavy.

X

 **IN THE CITY**

 **MORNING OF DAY THREE**

Sara had to keep focus. Even as she had approached, with Michael, Sin, Cisco, and Cynthia, they were all of a mind that they were about to come up on something that would keep them busy a while again, possibly require the intervention of others if they could be redirected. But then she'd keep thinking about her sister, about the night before.

Laurel hadn't said anything after Sara had finished her tale. She looked like she might have wanted to, but she had kept it in, and she'd turned and walked away, leaving her sister behind with a look that – she hoped – suggested that once she'd processed it all… She would get back to her. She hoped… she hoped… That look in her eyes hadn't stopped playing in her head as she'd made back for the clock tower, as she'd made herself lie down and try to sleep. She was sure she'd succeeded, for a while, here and there, but it was interrupted to the point where she never knew whether she'd been awake the entire time or not. Only the sunrise came… and there was a new day.

She would get back to her, she would… she had to. Until then, Sara couldn't just keep thinking about it, about her, about them… Until then, she had to be the Green Arrow.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	21. DAY 042 (vol 2, ch 21)

_Day 42 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 21_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

"Ruby, honey, I need you to stay with Lisa and do as she says, okay?" Samantha spoke evenly as Jim drove the van. "Yes… I will talk to you later, yes… I love you, too." When Cait had gotten back on the line and apologized for Ruby getting on the line after she'd heard her name mentioned, Samantha had allowed herself to grit her teeth while Kendra worked to stop the bleeding from her arm.

"You're alright, it's not that deep," Kendra informed her.

"Easy for you to say, you're not looking forward to a lecture from a twelve-year-old tonight," Samantha looked out the window rather than at the wound. It just seemed like the world was determined to give her one bruise or wound after another, traumatizing her daughter even more every time.

"Oh, you think she gives _me_ a pass?" Kendra laughed. "That kid is going to rule us all someday, you just watch."

"I believe that," Jim nodded from the driver's seat. "Did she find you a name yet?"

"I'm not even going to mention the front runners so far, one of them would stick and I'd be done for," Samantha shook her head, wincing as Kendra cleaned the wound.

"I can just ask her, she'll tell Auntie K everything."

"You do that, then we'll find _you_ a new one, Artemis."

"No, thanks, I'm good."

"Alright, look alive, there's something going on up there," Jim called.

"Just wrap it for now, we'll fix it later," Samantha motioned, and Kendra did as told.

The 'something' which had caught Jim's attention now was, much to their disbelief, their fourth fight between breachers in a row. They were always from different quarters, yes, but never the same two – or three – quarters at a time. The last one before this had been this one to leave Samantha with the wound on her arm, after a breacher out of Light had pulled a blade in the end, as Jim was restraining his partner. Samantha had jumped in, meaning to stop him, and then he'd swiped the blade at her. She'd hit him – with her other hand – and sent him sprawling before realizing she was bleeding.

These ones, only two, appeared to have come from Mist and Dark respectively, which turned the whole thing just a bit pointless. The Mist one looked like she could barely breathe, and the Dark one was squinting back the sun at every turn she made.

"I'll take this one, if you don't mind," Kendra stepped up, and Jim happily stepped back. "Hey, break it up, right now," she told the two women. They did stop, though only long enough to look at her, and then they were back going at each other. "Listen, I am not interested in fighting either one of you, but I will if you leave me no choice, and by the looks of you I will barely have to try. Come on, let's just… okay…" Kendra pushed in between, setting one hand on each of the women's shoulders and forcing them apart. They didn't even have the force to fight back.

"Now what's the problem with you two?" Jim asked, as Samantha moved in to stand near, in case one of them had any mind to try to jump in again. After two days of this they were getting to the point where they were starting to have a good idea of how these encounters would turn out. Either they'd get cursed out for sending them back, or they'd get pleads to let them stay, or they'd get the silent treatment. These two existed firmly in the third option.

Having secured them both and brought them on to the van, they turned and made their way toward where they might find the Waverider's jump ship for a transfer, thanks to Iris directing them, back at headquarters. Kendra got back to tending Samantha's wound as Jim drove.

Samantha could see the woman from Mist staring at her wound, looking at it like it terrified her. She guessed back where _she_ came from, a cut like that could mean trouble, infection, with the conditions they were under.

"Why did you come here?" Samantha asked her, in a kind voice as she might have used with Ruby, not judging, just caring. The woman still said nothing. "I bet if someone told me to go somewhere for some reason, somewhere with air I could breathe… I wouldn't even ask why, I'd just say 'when do you need me to go and what do I have to do?' And then I'd be out of there." The woman stayed quiet, though she kept her gaze now. "Do you know what people have been doing with your city's water, over in another quarter? Made it into a weapon, killed hundreds of people already."

"We were told… they needed it, to make it clean again," she spoke now, her voice weak, as though she'd coughed too much.

"The people who sent you here?" Samantha asked, and the woman hesitated. "You didn't actually do any harm, did you? Not to anyone here, barely to each other… There's a chance you wouldn't have to go back." She didn't want to bribe them into anything, and she made sure not to make any promises, only to lay out facts. The Dark woman, hearing this, had looked to the one she'd been fighting with not too long ago, giving her a short nod as though to encourage her to go on; this could mean freedom for both of them.

The woman from Mist had indicated her pocket, unable to reach because of the cuffs. Kendra had finished bandaging Samantha's arm, watching her all through the conversation, wondering if this would actually work. Now she went and reached in the woman's pocket as instructed. A small piece of paper, folded. When she opened it, Kendra saw it was a crude map of the city, which in essence was any of the cities, regardless of Earth or quarter. It was _this_ city. One point was marked, by the looks of it, roughly where the two women had been found fighting, along with a time.

"I never saw who left it," said the woman from Mist. "I wasn't supposed to bring it with me."

X

The fire had broken out in small house which doubled as someone's home office. Ronnie and Killer Frost were just around the corner and they'd smelled the smoke, so they'd taken off running to see what was happening. As they got closer, they could see one old man standing outside, facing the house, the smoke wafting back on to him.

"What's he doing?" Ronnie shook his head as he went toward the man, his legs stretching to lengthen his stride and get him there faster. "Sir? You need to step back, it's not… safe…" he stalled as he realized this was not the house's resident… This was their fire starter; his eyes glowed and his hands, Ronnie realized, were the source of the smoke around him, not the house. "Hey, this guy needs to cool off, right now," he called out, just as Killer Frost came up. In no time, 'Old Man Smokey,' as he'd come to be referred to, had been neutralized, which was good, but then it still didn't take care of the fire. "Do you hear that?" Ronnie asked Killer Frost, who was already marching toward the house and sending out a blast of chilled air, beating against the heat.

"I hear it," she assured him. "There's someone in the attic."

"Cait, are the firefighters close?" Ronnie asked, staring up at the house.

"Two minutes out," she reported in his ear.

"Right… okay…" he replied, coming up with an idea. "Hey! Hello? Can you hear me in there?" he shouted. "Hello? In the fire, hello?"

"What are you doing?" Cait asked.

"Hello?" he just kept calling, getting as close to the house as he could without touching the flames. He had yet to test what would happen if he were to come into direct contact with fire. All he knew was that everyone referenced rubber, and plastic, whenever they talked about his power, and he knew too well what happened to those when a flame was involved.

Then a woman in a suit appeared at the attic window, looking frightened.

"Yes, hey! Hi! Open the window!" Ronnie motioned. She shook her head. "Do it, please!" he insisted. Finally, she did as she was told. "Don't freak out!" he called, and then his body stretched out toward the open window. As soon as he could, he grabbed on to the ledge. "How do you feel about slides?" he asked.

Whether she cared for them on a day to day basis, today she was very comfortable with slides, and she used Ronnie for that exact purpose, making her way from her window and to the ground. As soon as she was down, he'd returned to his normal shape, shaking off the heat which had been way too close for comfort by the end. And by the time the firefighters did make it to the house, Killer Frost had already put it out, emerging from the house and giving them a tip of the head before moving to the old breacher who she'd put on ice.

"For a second there I thought by the time we'd get back, you'd have melted your way through. What's the matter, couldn't get a spark anymore?"

"Why would I go and do a thing like that? Do you think I wanted to do this? All my life, I've had to hide what I could do, and now they make me use it for this? Now send me back, give me to those ARGUS folk, make it a good parade back to Dark so I can get my granddaughter back." Killer Frost was so taken aback by this that within seconds she was Amaya again.

"They have your granddaughter?" she asked.

"She's only fourteen, she's like me. We aren't allowed in the city, my own son turned her away so I am raising her. Now, arrest me and make it quick."

They'd contacted the jump ship. Waiting with the man outside the house until they arrived, Ronnie and Amaya sat on the grass. According to the old man, he'd returned from getting food from 'the green one's cave,' as the alien would go into the city and bring back supplies every week, allowing him and his granddaughter to take whatever they needed, only to find their own cave empty. His granddaughter was gone, but there was a message left behind, and it told it all plainly: go to the other Earth, do 'what you do best,' or else they'd give the girl back to the dark.

The jump ship had arrived, the crew inside looking briefly confused when they saw who their breacher was. Amaya told them to 'make it look good' when they brought him back to Dark, and Old Man Smokey welcomed this with tears that sizzled against his cheeks and repeated thanks. He was taken on to the jump ship, and then he was off, leaving behind the Elongated Man and Killer Frost.

"It just doesn't stop, does it?" Cait's voice was in their ears.

"Will you let us know if you hear how things go back in Dark?" Ronnie asked. "When they drop him off?"

"I will," she promised him. With a breath, the duo had moved on, wondering what the day would bring them next.

X

Oliver knew there was something on his little sister's mind. She thought he couldn't tell how she'd run up ahead of him whenever she didn't want him to see. Well now he didn't need to see what she was thinking to know that she _was_ thinking about something, a lot, and it was pulling her focus. But then it was not pulling it so much that she wasn't able to do what she had to do when she had to do it, so he did his best not to show that he knew something was up… no matter how much he'd worry over her.

They had the benefit of being able to do something the others couldn't, which was almost like a game, except for how they really had to be at the right place at the right time to get to play it.

Every so often, as they'd go along running, they would see a breach opening, very slowly. And then they'd see someone jump through. And when they did, they would quickly get a hold of them and simply toss them back through the still open breach, waiting until they either tried again or the breach would close and disappear. They called it 'catch and release.' There was no telling whether that would put an end to all endeavors for the breachers in question, but at the very least it would slow them down, maybe give them a chance to be caught… or change their minds.

"That's three for me and two for you, _Flash_ ," Thea declared after sending another back. "Now, I don't mean to brag here, but I do, I really do, so… ha!" she nodded. "Alright, let's go!" she started running again, and he dashed off after her. She was doing it again, pulling ahead, and finally he had to say something. So he really ran after her now, and then he was ahead of her and able to get her to stop again. "What is it?" she asked.

"You know what," he said. "What's wrong?" She hesitated, eyes darting aside for a moment.

"Nothing," she lied.

"Thea," he pronounced very quietly, even though there was no one around to hear.

"This is really not the time, trust me," his sister shook her head.

"I think it might be," he insisted. She sighed, turning sideways away from him for a moment, thinking, before facing him again. "We've never had secrets from each other."

"Except for the whole aliens, speedsters thing when I was younger."

"Again, we were kids, and I couldn't even say for sure if you'd get it, and… Look, you get what I'm saying. Whatever's wrong, we can handle it. I know things are changing, with Mom and Dad back in the picture, but it doesn't mean it has to change us. You and me, that's how it's always been."

"I…" she started, and seeing how she resisted the revelation, the micro tics she had, only visible to a fellow speedster like him, did nothing to settle his own apprehension. "It turns out there's a reason why Malcolm Merlyn is dangerous to us, besides the whole fugitive thing that Supergirl told us about." A pause, again. "He's… he's my father."

The words resonated and rebounded inside his head.

"He's…" he started to repeat it, but he couldn't even do it.

"Mom and he… got together briefly, I…" she shook her head, not eager to get into that kind of detail. "I only found out the night before last, and… I've been trying to tell you, about that, about Tommy, and…"

Tommy… Tommy Merlyn… He'd be her brother, too, if it was true, and once he was added into the puzzle, there was almost no chance to deny it anymore. The moment Oliver had seen him, there'd been something familiar in him. And now he knew why.

"I know it's a lot to take, and I… I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, and I don't… I know this will be different for you, you grew up around her and…"

"I remember him," Oliver blinked, thinking back.

"You do?" Thea asked.

"Sort of… it's vague, but there was this man who'd come by the house when I was little, and… then he stopped coming, not long before you were born." They stood in silence for a few seconds. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have made you say anything, I…" he shook his head. "Are you okay?"

"Strangely, a lot more than I thought I would be. Not that I thought about something like _this_ ever happening, I mean it sounds straight out of some soap opera or something. Dead parents not really dead, oh, also, your father is not your father, your father is a bad man, also here's a brother you never knew."

"Sounds terrible," he gave her a small smile.

"Not a fan," she agreed. "Can we try not getting into it with them tonight? Pretend like I haven't told you yet or something?"

"I'll try," he shrugged. He was being honest, really. He thought about being in the room with their parents and pretending like he had no idea, and somehow he always ended up standing there, staring at his mother, his father… and then it would all come out. But they'd just gotten them back, after all this time thinking they were dead… How could they not want to hold on to that? "I'll really try."

"I couldn't ask more," she tipped his head. He stepped up and hugged her now, much to her – weak – protest. After that they'd gotten back to running, seeking issues to fix. This time now, they ran evenly, side by side. No one ahead or behind, just the Speedsters Queen, the Flash and Kid Flash dashing through the city.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	22. DAY 044 (vol 2, ch 22)

_A/N: There is now a preliminary/basic character list in my profile here, figured it'd be good to have there, especially until I can get the more in depth info mounted up. If there's any info in particular you'd like to see in there, let me know! :)_

* * *

 _Day 44 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 22_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

There had never been anything of this magnitude for her to handle before, but then Iris strongly doubted _any_ of them here, or most any at the worst, would have had to deal with something like this before. Still, even if she _had_ faced the occasional complicated situation back on Breach, in Haven, for the most part everything she'd had to handle had been small, really.

And now, caught up in the middle of this situation which was anything but small, she would find herself wishing more and more for things to slow down, to stop… Even when she went to sleep, both nights since this had started, it was never really over. She was still here, in ARGUS headquarters, on a different Earth, thinking about her missing brother, her father's… who knew what. There was no breather, no break from this.

Iris was glad to know Tommy and the others had returned from their side trip to Haven, she was, although she really didn't know what she'd been hoping to hear once they did. She didn't know… what she'd been expecting to find, but then when Tommy had told her what they'd learned, from John Diggle himself, about Tommy's father, and her father, and these mystery friends of theirs… When she'd finally stepped away, back to her 'room' inside headquarters, to her bed, all she could think was… _What are you doing, Dad?_

And now here she was, again, back at her post, in this endless problem with the breachers, and she tried not to look like it was starting to get to her, but it was hard. She wasn't out there, dealing with them, but then those out there in the field, they only got to hear about and deal with a percentage of them. Iris had been seeing just about every story, every encounter, roll across her screen, and it was a lot… it was so much.

"Hey, now, what's going on in there?" Tommy's voice reached her ears even as he laid his hands on her shoulders. When her shoulders slumped, he pivoted her chair until she was facing him. "Talk to me." She sank back in her seat, shrugging. "Don't give me that, we've been friends too long for you to think that's going to work on me, especially today. Bad Dads Club, remember?"

"Which might be bigger than we think before this is through."

"The other guys, yeah? I know, I've been thinking about them, too. Hey, did you ever see this one guy, dark haired, had sort of a… an accent I can't place, sort of… maybe Swedish, German… Dutch?" he frowned, trying to call up the voice but only really confusing what he thought he remembered it sounding like in the process. For all he knew, he was now thinking of some actor in a movie and the guy could have actually been Australian, American, anything… But no, he definitely remembered thinking 'European, not British.'

"I… maybe? Kind of…" Iris frowned, too, thinking back, though she mostly shook her head.

"John said one of them had long dark hair and a beard. Pretty sure Mystery Accent Guy had a ponytail, bit of facial hair." Iris looked at him. She could almost see it now… a man… She didn't know that she had seen him more than once, but he had spooked her, and now the memory of him was sort of like a nightmare, deep in the recesses of her mind, but easily called up if triggered. She didn't know that she'd ever heard his name though, so it didn't get them any further, except to leave them with the speculation that this one man John Diggle had seen with their fathers was someone they both vaguely remembered seeing with each of them.

There were the other two though… Tall black guy and blond guy… not a whole lot to go on. And even if they could say whether they knew of any connection between the five of them or not, they were no closer to knowing who they were, where they were, or what they were planning to do.

"Are you going back to Haven?" Iris asked Tommy.

"I… I don't know," he told her. "I think the rest of them want to help here a bit. If it goes back to our dads, we might trace something or someone back to them by being here. So… got anything for me?" he asked, pressing his hands together. She pivoted her chair back toward the screen and looked at the map.

"How does a hospital looting sound?"

"Horrible, we'll take it," Tommy sighed, and she pointed the location out. "Got it. Talk to you in a bit," he pointed to his ear before dashing off to track down his impromptu team of Agent Drake, Supergirl, and CSI Michaels.

She watched him go for a moment before facing her screen again, her foot tip tapping off one of the wheels of her chair. Then she had a thought and turned, looking around.

"Ruby?" she called out, and the girl looked over from where she'd been standing – out of the way – with Lisa Snart. Iris waved her over and she came at once. Grabbing the tablet sitting in front of her, she quickly tracked down facial compositing and handed it to the girl. "If I describe someone to you while I keep handling my screens, think you can work this?"

"Definitely," Ruby beamed, sitting next to her.

X

 **THE BREACH SHIP WAVERIDER'S JUMP SHIP**

 **BREACH EARTH, DARK QUARTER**

The jump ship had crossed in to Dark, the loss of sunlight around them being at least a little easier to manage from inside here than if they had walked on through instead. Also making this trip feel lighter was their current passenger. After two days and some of angry, violent, or stoic breachers treating their return to whatever quarter they'd skipped off from, this one had been as cooperative and dignified as anything. They'd already heard the rundown of his story from Cait Snow as they'd been directed to meet her husband and their associate at an extinguished house fire.

The old man's granddaughter was being held hostage, on the trade-off that he should go to Main and create havoc the best way he could, with the fiery meta power he'd been gifted with, same as his grandchild. Now they were to return him to Dark in full view, treating him for the action he'd carried out, so whoever held the girl would see and do their part, releasing her.

It had been decided among the five of them on the jump ship, without words and without telling the old man – in case it didn't work out – that once the girl was free, they would collect her and her grandfather both and return them to Main once again, to settle them somewhere without fear of their ever being persecuted again.

"Right," Leonard had faced the man as the jump ship landed. "This here is Agent Sharpe, and that's Agent Lane. They're with ARGUS."

"Hello," the man nodded to both women, who smiled and nodded back to him.

"They will handle you. Feel free to struggle, shout, if you need to, whatever works. They won't let you get away but they won't harm you either."

"Yes, I understand," the man continued to nod appreciatively.

"If you want to throw some of your fire around, Agent Sharpe here is tougher than she looks… Actually, the two might be equal," he tipped his head, observing his 'second in command,' who squinted at him but said nothing, though she did confirm the claim with a nod to the old man.

"My granddaughter…" he asked.

"We're not leaving here until she's safe," Quentin promised him, and there was no doubting his claim.

"Alright then, places everyone, it's show time," Leonard clapped his hands together.

Obsidian slipped out as the hatch opened out from the ship, a shadow disappearing in the dark. Quentin would remain with the jump ship, in the event that they needed to make a quick exit. Now, Leonard Snart stepped off from the jump ship, with Agents Sharpe and Lane escorting the old man down and back on Dark Quarter soil.

"Unhand me right now!" the old man started before they'd even stepped off, struggling against the hold on his bound arms. "You've seen what I can do!"

"Alright, easy there, keep walking," Lucy told him, never releasing him.

"I'm warning you! I will turn you to ash and smoke!" he continued his tirade, leaning into Ava's hold as his eyes turned to a pair of glowing embers, his hands brightening, too, at his back, until his bonds fell apart. He grasped the agent's arm and she made a good show of looking startled and letting him go momentarily before Leonard stepped in and injected him with a tranquilizer and helping Lucy support his weight as he went limp.

"Sharpe, you alright?" he turned to look at her, and she nodded, holding to her arm and following them as they carried the unconscious man inside the Dark Quarter ARGUS outpost.

Out in the small crowd which had gathered as soon as the jump ship had been sighted, and which had grown with the spectacle of the old man's escort, Obsidian made himself as scarce as a shadow in the dark, and he waited, watching. Finally, he spotted a pair of men detaching themselves from the pack. He followed them, all the way to a small house. And inside, sedated and kept unconscious – so she couldn't set fire to the place – was a young girl laid out on a bed.

"What do we do now?" one of the men asked the other.

"You can tell me what you sent that man to the other Earth for," Ed's voice echoed through the room, and the men startled, looking around.

"Who's there?"

"You didn't answer my question," Ed's disembodied voice declared.

"W-we… We were just supposed to keep the girl, we had nothing to do with that," the first one said, looking and looking around the room.

"Shut up!" the second one told him, but then Obsidian had what he wanted to hear. He could already guess where this would end up. All this delegating of tasks, and no one saw who was at the top of the chain. "Where are you?" the man shouted.

"Right here," he appeared before them, in the dim firelight, and the men screamed.

Within minutes they'd been knocked out, restrained, and Ed Thawne was carrying the still unconscious girl back to the outpost. Agents would be dispatched to bring in the kidnappers, but that was beyond the Waverider team's duties here.

"Oh… oh, is she alright?" the old man, awake once more, came up quick when he saw his granddaughter.

"Unconscious, she'll be fine," Ed promised.

"Now, how about we all get out of here. She might wake up to the sun back on Main," Leonard came up to the old man. He looked around, at the five of them, at his granddaughter, in complete surprise, and then, humbled and grateful.

Detective Raatko wasn't there to welcome them, to help them settle in, but they were aware of another emigrant out of Dark who would happily see them through their start on Main. As it turned out, the old man had known her, too, as she'd been a good friend of 'the green one.' Now to be reunited with her, and to meet her infant son, the old man felt for the first time that he and his granddaughter just might have a shot at this new life they were being promised.

"You can tell your husband and your friend that both man and girl are safe and settled, Miss Snow," Leonard had informed the woman back at headquarters, and she had thanked him and told him she would pass on the message, all the while directing them to another transfer awaiting them.

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

There was no telling for sure until they'd come face to face with the intruders whether or not this break in was breachers or opportunistic thieves, but this was a museum… What would breachers want in a museum on Main except to do what pretty much all the rest of them had been doing, causing trouble, breaking things… They might have let the police handle this one, but then if it _was_ breachers it would fall to them sooner or later.

"Through there," Sin pointed. "Ancient artefacts."

The museum had been closed since everything had started two days before, and they'd already come by the guards, knocked out in no gentle manner. Four intruders, as they'd been able to see, with five of them there to apprehend them… That should do.

They'd try and deal with this as promptly as possible, without any damages they'd then have to answer for. Crisis or no, the blame would get back to them sooner or later, as though it had been _their_ idea to break into the place.

"You did say four, right?" Cisco's voice asked, low in Sara's ear. She had, except now there were only three, so where had number four gotten off to?

"Spartan?" she whispered, and he moved off in search of number four without a word. "No weapons," she told the others.

"Four archers and no arrows," Sin frowned, but she did as told.

The trio still inside the ancient artefacts exhibit had not gone down easy, but in the end they had been brought down. As it turned out, they _weren't_ breachers, but to Sara it still felt deep down like this was connected. She supposed, whatever all these breachers were up to, it would stand to reason that some Main Earth people would be involved, too, making it that much easier to blend in. They definitely had that 'I'm not talking' attitude the breachers did, when Sara, Sin, Cisco, and Cynthia had stood over them, bound together on the ground.

"Did you find him?" Sara asked when Michael returned. He held out his hands, pointing out he had nothing and no one. "Where'd your friend go?" she turned back to the three on the ground, but they had even less to say now that they knew the fourth of their group had gotten away. "Did he take anything?"

"An idol," Cynthia replied, pointing to an empty display.

"Please don't say magic, please don't say magic, please don't say magic," Sin repeated, closing her eyes.

"Plug your ears then," Cisco spoke quietly.

This wasn't good. They'd stopped three of the thieves, but the fourth was still roaming free, and he'd gotten away with something… something that could bring even more trouble into their midst, as though they needed anything else to keep them occupied. And then there was the fact that they had been the ones to lose the thief and the idol. If they'd caught them all, and nothing had been successfully stolen, they would possibly have gotten gratitude from the police. Now, more than likely, they would get bundled up with the thieves to be carried away.

Sara had gotten in touch with Iris back at ARGUS, explaining quickly how the whole thing had gone. At once, Iris had told her she would redirect Agent Drake to the museum, and that they should stay there… Leaving would only make things worse.

So they'd stayed and waited. Well, most of them had. Cynthia had bowed out, pointing out the different ramifications she would face if she were found in the middle of a museum robbery. She had promised to keep on helping where she could, and to get back to them 'if they didn't end up in prison,' and then she was gone. After that, it had become something like personal wagers about who would show up first, Dinah or the cops.

In the end, it was both of them at once, and what Sara wouldn't have given for the cops to show up on the scene to be her father and his partner, but of course it wasn't. Still, it seemed like Dinah Drake had not wasted a second to talk them up with the officers who did show up. She was pretty sure they worked with her father and Ed, too, although they didn't know about _their_ second job, much less about how she was secretly Quentin Lance's daughter, the one who'd gone missing for five years.

"Right, you four, with me," Agent Drake motioned authoritatively toward the Green Arrow, Spartan, Speedy, and Arsenal. "Thank you, Officer, I'll leave you to them," she indicated the three thieves on the ground.

They didn't stick around too long, although they knew sooner or later they'd have to address this again. The trio wasn't just going to keep quiet to the fact that there'd been another woman on their team, or that they'd let their fourth partner get away, and the officers would see the empty display… What else could they have done? On all accounts, they had done what they could and were supposed to do. They had been alerted to the robbery, they had responded in case of breachers, and the missing thief was already gone by the time they'd come along…

"What happens now?" Sara asked.

"Now you get back out there," Dinah shrugged. There really was nothing else _to_ do. The city needed all the help it could get, and taking the four of them off the board would have been a mistake, something they had to hope the police would realize… for now.

"Thank you," Sara tipped her head to her before running off along with her team. In no time they were being directed to another call, continuing on their endless days of breacher hunting. She couldn't stop thinking about that last thief though… the idol… and the threat of magic looming over their heads. She wouldn't have put much weight in it, but… this was just the world they lived in, wasn't it?

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	23. DAY 046 (vol 2, ch 23)

_Day 46 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 23_

 **BREACH EARTH, DARK QUARTER**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

John Diggle had never actually set foot in any other quarter of Breach or on to Main Earth at all until the night before, when he had answered Lyla's request for assistance, to look into these disappearances. Now here he was, back on his Earth – still a baffling concept – but in another quarter, another iteration of their Earth. As far as he'd been told, this one was in a perpetual state of night, and not particularly technologically active.

He didn't care about all that. What he _did_ care about was that one of the unidentified kidnappers had been identified for having originated in this quarter, and he intended to identify her. After her, to identify those men who'd nabbed Zari Tomaz, he only had to return home to Haven, and that would be his territory, infinitely more familiar.

Approaching the citizens of Dark with a photograph of the unidentified blonde on his phone screen was about as far from creating an ease between them and him, but he wasn't after ease at this point. He was after a name. He asked about. Did they know her? If they didn't, then who might know?

He genuinely intended to find those three who'd been taken, would bring them home if it was in any way possible. Would he be lying if he said it had nothing to do with doing something good for Lyla? Would he be lying if he said he wasn't trying to create encounters, memories, where he wasn't the version of himself she'd grown to despise, to fear?

Yes, plainly so. He was smarter than to think that he hadn't already pushed her too far away. But if he could get himself as close to her again as he could ever hope to be, it would already be better than to remain at such a distance as he had been.

His search was a slow going one, until he came across what he soon identified as metahumans, two of them. He had a feeling that, in a place like this, they might adhere to the logic of 'strength in numbers.' He showed the picture once again, and while _he_ had a great poker face, these boys did not. Soon they had surrendered the name of Lyra Star.

"But she's not here, you won't find her," one of the boys spoke defiantly, as though intent on protecting the absent girl. John gave him a look, and the boy swallowed hard.

"Where did she go?"

"I don't know… I swear," the boy shook his head, and his friend did the same.

"If you see her, go to the outpost," John pointed back to where it sat. "Tell them to let headquarters know. Do you understand?" The boys both nodded. "Good."

Lyra Star, of Dark. Jesse Wells, of Haven. Lily Stein, of War. That was three. Now for the other two.

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

Ronnie and Amaya had been pleased to hear that Old Man Smokey had not only been reunited with his granddaughter but now both of them were back here, on Main, and settling into new lives where they wouldn't have to hide, not like they had done in Dark.

They had only just stopped for what might have been 'the world's quickest lunch' if that hadn't been their mode of feeding themselves for the third day straight now. All they could do was buy something, eat as they walked, and hope that they managed to eat the whole thing before 'work' called once again. Ronnie was already not one to waste perfectly good food, and to be forced to discard anything because some breacher or another was causing trouble…

No amount of his burger had been scrapped that day, by the time a woman's cries had alerted them to some breachers who had forced her out of her house and locked her out while they remained inside.

"Now that is just disrespectful," Ronnie shook his head. "Lucky for us, I am my own spare key. Hold on, it can get a bit tricky…" He aimed his finger at the key hole, letting it stretch and stretch until it could replicate the shape of the key needed to turn the lock. "And here we are," the lock clicked.

"I would suggest you go and wait across the street," Amaya told the woman, even as her voice and her appearance shifted, letting her fade away until Killer Frost had emerged. "Have I mentioned I loathe home invaders?"

"Every chance you get," Ronnie nodded. His key finger retreated and was used to shush her even as it was returning to its normal shape.

"Gross," Killer Frost shook her head, moving past him and into the house.

"Wasn't gross when you were drunk last Christmas and you forgot your keys, suddenly it was 'Open the door, Ronald.' You called me _Ronald_ ," he whispered. She turned and motioned for him to be quiet, so fast he half expected his lips to be frozen shut.

They moved further into the house, listening intently. Killer Frost signalled she would check the ground floor, and he should go look upstairs. He nodded and went up, stretching along so that he didn't have to take each step and announce his arrival. The woman had managed to inform them there had been two breachers, and all Ronnie could think about was that either he and Killer Frost would each run into one, or it'd be two against one, and one against an empty room and…

A crash downstairs confirmed his fear that he'd just let his friend walk into an ambush, and it took all his self-control to not run down the stairs and instead be quiet again. As he neared the kitchen, he felt a chill so deep in him, he knew Killer Frost had to be giving the breachers as good as…

He only just realized someone was behind him in the split second it took for him to whip around and twist his body into a stretch that helped him dodge getting clocked in the back of the head by what looked like a very strange and overly large gun.

"So you're the plastic man, huh?" the guy nodded at him.

"I prefer Elongated Man, thanks," Ronnie glared. "Now how about you and your buddy clear out of here, let the nice lady back in her house."

"We would be happy to," the breacher gave all overly sincere charm. "All you have to do is put these on," he held up a pair of heavy cuffs.

"Listen, man, I'm flattered, but I'm married, and frankly not into the whole bondage thing, but you do what you feel like on your time, alright?"

"Ronald, duck," Killer Frost called, and somewhere between trying not to laugh and ask if that was Donald's cousin, he'd done as told, allowing her to try and pin the guy down with ice darts. Bondage guy had also ducked, unfortunately, and the darts went harmlessly into the wall. At the same time, the first guy, the one in the kitchen, pointed _his_ ridiculous gun at her… and the thing shot ice. She waved it off before it could ever touch her, but now she was just smiling. "You have a _cold_ gun? That's cute. I _am_ a cold gun," she demonstrated, prepared to turn him into a very tall statue.

But then a heat took her, and she rolled aside, colliding with the kitchen counter and tumbling to the ground, Killer Frost retreating to let out…

"Amaya!" Ronnie tried to go to her, but now tall guy had his gun aimed at her.

"I don't know what will happen if I freeze her while she's like this, should we find out?"

"What do you want?" Ronnie asked him, minding that there was also the other guy, the one with the gun that shot fire.

"Like I said…" fire guy showed him the cuffs once again. "See, now, if you try anything and she gets more hurt than she already is, it won't be on us. It'll be because you tried to be a hero. So what's it going to be, _hero_?"

He had a few very choice words in that moment, but unfortunately they had him. He wouldn't risk Amaya's life for this. He held up his hands, and the cuffs were locked around his wrists. As soon as they were fastened in place, he knew what they were. His powers wouldn't work now. He was defenseless, and quite possibly more vulnerable than ever. Last he was aware of was a pain at the back of his head, and the world went dark.

X

 **SOMEWHERE…**

"… smells like Main. And I think he might be a meta, but I'm not sure, it's like… Wait, I think he's waking up."

"Hey… Are you okay?" a second female voice sounded from nearby. He opened his eyes, slowly, a headache throbbing. All he really knew in the beginning was 'Who are these people?' as he looked from the young guy, to the one girl, and the other one who had to be an alien. But then either his brain had rebooted or he was actually looking at them now, because…

"I know you…" he frowned, looking at the human girl closely. "You're… you're that reporter, Lisa's friend," he declared, and her eyes grew wide. "Zari, yeah?"

"Yeah," she replied, both surprised and a tiny bit relieved. "Who are you?"

"Ronnie… Raymond, I… You're Iris' brother," he pointed to the guy. "And you were on the Waverider, in… in War…" He sat up, pressing his hands to his eyes for a moment, trying to get his senses back in order.

"Aren't you friends with Amaya, uh… Killer Frost?" Zari asked, recalling where she'd heard the name before.

"I am, I… Amaya…" he remembered, panicking momentarily. "She was hurt, they… I couldn't stop it, I don't know if she's…" He looked around, expecting maybe that she'd be here, too… Wherever here was… He might have asked what was going on, but at this point it was all fairly obvious. If he was here, in this strange room, with the three of them, then he was a captive just as they were.

"Who got you, was it the girls or…" Wallace asked.

"No, there were two guys, had these guns. One shot ice, and the other…"

"Fire, yeah, we've met," Zari gingerly touched her bandaged shoulder. "So they took you from Main, like me, that's two of us now…"

He was sitting there, and looking down at his hands, he saw that he no longer had the cuffs, but… His powers still didn't work. He actually tried, which looked very weird when nothing happened, but it was no use.

"I don't have my powers," he told them. He moved to get up, felt wobbly instantly.

"Okay, take it easy, pretty sure you got knocked on the head," Zari told him, as Wallace had reached to keep him from falling. He didn't try to get up again, but at the same time, he was hit with a sudden new thought, one that might have sent him sprawling back down if he'd tried to get up.

Cait.

What was this going to do to her, to the baby, when she found out he'd been taken? All this time he had been so aware of the possibility of his getting hurt in his activities, trying to catch breachers, but somehow _this_ scenario had never entered his mind. And now it was a reality, and he felt his anxiety rise.

"Okay, how do we get out of here?" he asked the other three.

"Soon as we find out, you'll be the first to know," Zari gave him a look, and he bowed his head.

"Sorry…"

"Don't worry about it, we're all a bit frantic after getting here," Wallace told him.

"For now just take it easy, get your balance back… Are you hungry?" Zari asked. He shook his head, which hurt, of course. "No problem, it can wait. After you're a little better we can tell you all that's happened so far, and what we've figured out about this place and the people who took us."

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

Cait would suspect that the word had not reached her before by some intent. All she knew was that, at one time, Iris had come for her and tried to pull her aside.

"What is it?" Cait asked her, and seeing the worried look on her face, she couldn't say for certain if the worry was for herself or for Cait.

"Listen, there's no easy way to say this…" Iris started, and Cait felt her heart churn, as though it was trying to flee whatever words could possibly complete that sentence. "Something happened out there, about half an hour ago. Looks like those guys that took Zari Tomaz broke into some woman's house, locked her out. Ronnie and Amaya responded, and now…" She paused, looking past Cait, who turned at once and took off when she saw…

"Amaya? Hey… hey… it's me, it's Cait, I'm here," she reached for her friend's hand. There was a great gash along the side of her head, like she'd hit it, and they had her on her stomach on the stretcher they were carrying her in on, because there was a sizable burn on her back.

"They took him, Cait…" she spoke groggily. "Couldn't stop it… Took him… Sorry… sorry…" She'd drifted off unconscious after that, and Cait stood there, watching as they carried her off to treat her.

She felt like she couldn't breathe, and then Iris was with her again, putting her arm around her shoulder in reassurance. But what was there to even reassure her? Barry and Eobard were off on Breach Earth, Amaya was hurt, and Ronnie… Ronnie… She had to breathe, she had to try and calm down, couldn't…

"Here, come, sit down," Iris had taken her back to a chair. Lisa Snart and Ruby Arias were standing nearby, looking worried and confused. Cait vaguely heard Iris tell them that the guys who'd taken Zari had just taken Ronnie. In a moment, the young girl had taken hold of her hand. Cait looked at her, wishing she had words to say, but there were none. All she could do was give her hand a squeeze.

Stay calm… She had to stay calm… It wasn't possible, but she had to. Everything in her head was just in shambles. Ronnie… the baby… the breachers… She couldn't run, couldn't go out there, or she might… Ronnie had been taken, and Amaya might be out of the fight for a while, if not completely, while all this was still going on, which just told her that while the city so desperately needed its heroes, two of them had been taken out of the roster, and she couldn't even…

"I need to go see if Amaya is okay," she moved to get up, absently still holding on to Ruby's hand. The girl didn't say a word and only followed.

There were still plenty of the injured laid out in an area of headquarters, some from the day before, others from this morning. Those who'd been here since day one and still couldn't be discharged had been moved elsewhere.

They were tending to Amaya now. Cait and Ruby stood within her line of sight while remaining out of the way. Right now, ensuring that her friend knew she wasn't alone was about the only thing Cait could focus on that didn't revolve around a repeated and repeated line of Ronnie, and the baby, and the city, and Ronnie, and the baby, and the city… Her hand went to rest to her stomach, breathing deep.

Right then, though she didn't say anything, Ruby Arias realized that the woman, who had been kind to her since she'd been here and who continued to be, was pregnant. She hadn't known that, and while it would have been exciting to learn it before, now it made her see what was happening around her feel that much more worrisome.

When they were finally able to come near and sit with Amaya, Cait had reached out, softly brushing at her friend's hair, pushing it away from her face. Amaya stared back at her, like she wanted to cry.

"We were making jokes, and then we went into the house and… I should have known, I…"

"This isn't your fault," Cait promised her. Amaya stared back at her, like she was thinking back to the moment they'd run into those guys with the big guns, not daring to share details of Ronnie's taking.

She was not going to cry. No. If she cried, then it would mean that she thought he wasn't coming home. He _would_ come home. He had to. They were going to be a family… They would be parents, and he would be there. He would come home. Somehow, he would. He would… He would…

"Excuse me," Cait got up, leaving Ruby with Amaya so she might step off somewhere to be alone for a moment. Her hands felt like they would 'go hummingbird' at the slightest moment's inattention. And if she really didn't keep focus, she would just run… She would run and run, all over this city, until she found Ronnie and the others, but… No, she couldn't… There was no telling what it would do, to her, to… _Don't cry… Keep it together… He's coming home… We'll find him, they… they'll find him._

Iris had been the one to come and find her, along with Lisa Snart, as she stood there, leaning to the wall and crying to herself. They held her, waves of calm wafting off of them but refusing to stick to her. They had to find him… she couldn't… He had to come home…

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	24. DAY 048 (vol 2, ch 24)

_Day 48 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 24_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

To see their faces, there on a small screen even if not in person and there with her, had been much more of a relief than she could say in that moment… Cait knew she must have been wearing her worry and her exhaustion on her face when the call had been patched through to her and she'd seen Barry and Eobard's faces pop up, standing side by side in what had to be the Waverider's library. And by the looks on _their_ faces, she could guess they'd been informed about Ronnie.

She knew they were going to have loads of questions, the first one – because they were the friends that they were – would be about her, and whether she was alright, and she really didn't want to have to answer it, because really she had no idea.

"Amaya was burnt, but she's alright now. She couldn't change at first, but then Killer Frost took over, and she healed right up. She wants to get back out there, but she's sticking around for a little bit. I think she just wants to make sure I'm alright. I don't like the idea of her having to go back out there on her own, but she's been talking about joining up with a few others here…"

"Cait, hey, slow down," Barry spoke, and she was forced to stop talking, to breathe.

"I just need to keep talking, keep thinking. If I slow down, I…" she bowed her head, feeling tears raising in her again.

"Is there something else going on?" Eobard asked. Leave it to him to be intuitive that way. "Ralph said you were at ARGUS HQ when all this happened." She looked back at the screen now. They still didn't know. There had never really been a chance to tell them, and it wasn't as though they'd been shouting it on the rooftops yet, only a few people knowing. It wasn't how she would have liked to tell them, not the moment, but they'd see right through her if she lied anyway.

"I was," she confirmed. "I've had to pitch in from here instead of out there, it's too much of a risk… to the baby."

To see the two of them, staring back at her, utterly dumbfounded for a moment, and then breaking into the smiles that they gave her… They'd been having some hellish days of their own out there on Breach, and she'd just given them news that was as good as it got. She'd smiled back, feeling if only for a moment like her tears were happy ones. It could only hold so long. There was still the worry, for Ronnie, for what could happen to this little start of a person in her, for the fact that the city was still suffering and she couldn't do anything about it…

"Ah, so you told them, huh?" She looked back to find Amaya, walking toward her until she could sneak a look over her shoulder at the tablet screen. "Hey, strangers," she waved to Barry and Eobard, who waved back.

"Heard about what happened…" Barry started, and she waved off whatever he'd say next.

"I'm alright. It's going to take more than a fire gun and the business end of a counter to get me out of this," she declared. "Now _you_ two haven't been taking it easy either from what we've heard." It was the first time they really got to hear about some of the things that had been happening over in War, and it all sounded as terrible as they'd envisioned, if not more.

"About Ronnie…" Eobard started again, and Cait felt that tightness in her throat again for a moment.

"There's someone out there looking for him, for all of them that were taken," Amaya told them. "He'll find them," she declared, and Cait could feel her eyes on her as she said this, for her benefit more than anyone else's. She couldn't make herself respond. "So don't go worrying about anything out there. You keep doing what you have to do, and we'll keep doing the same. When it's all over, we can all share our stories."

Cait stayed quiet again, but she nodded to show she was of the same mind. As much as she would have liked to have her friends there with her, what they were all doing was too important. Just getting to talk to them… that had been good.

X

 **THE BREACH SHIP WAVERIDER'S JUMP SHIP**

"Another one," Leonard Snart spoke evenly, as his sister told them about the Elongated Man's getting kidnapped by those two unknowns with the big guns.

"They're getting bolder about it," Agent Sharpe remarked. "And they could have taken them both, instead of leaving a witness. But they only took him."

"His wife's been here with us, it's just…" Lisa shook her head. "If they targeted him, maybe they thought it would have more of an impact to take him, cause more… distraction…" she trailed off, looking somewhere beyond her screen now.

"What is it?" her brother asked.

"Cops," Lisa told him, "On their way to see Director Heywood." The five on the jump ship didn't think too much of it at first. With everything that had been happening in the city over the past three days, was it any wonder that they'd have to cooperate on some things? But then Lisa had spoken again. "Wonder if it has anything to do with the museum."

"The museum?" Lucy asked.

"You didn't hear?" Lisa asked them. They hadn't. "There was a robbery. The Green Arrow and her team were out there, tried to stop them, but one of the thieves got away. He managed to steal something. Wait, they're here now?"

"Who's there?" Quentin asked.

"Team Arrow," Lisa told him. "I'll try to see what's going on, I'll get back to you." The screen went black. Leonard turned to look at his team. In particular, he looked to Quentin Lance. Without a word, he looked to Ava, now in the pilot's seat, and she nodded, taking them up to head toward headquarters. Whatever was happening, if it had to do with Quentin's daughter getting in trouble for something that would have gotten _them_ little more than a reprimand… he couldn't just sit back and do nothing, and neither could they.

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

 **DIRECTOR HEYWOOD'S OFFICE**

Sara knew that if it wasn't for the director she would have been forced to unmask herself already, and that she might have been sitting with her hands cuffed behind her back already. She wasn't going to throw that back in his face by acting in any other way than polite and honest. Even the officers who had been sent down to talk with the director, to her and the rest of her team, looked like they didn't see the point of being there. But they had their orders, so here they were, four vigilantes, the director of ARGUS, and a pair of police officers, sitting in an office to have a conversation while the city was being overrun by breachers.

"Now," Director Heywood spoke with a sigh, addressing the officers. "You have security footage, yes?" They nodded. "And is there any doubt that these four's statement differs from the events that took place in that museum?"

"No, sir," said the first of the officer. "However, the concern has been that they might have been cooperating with the three we apprehended at the scene."

"What?" Sin spoke up, unable to hold back. Sara gave her a look. "I'm sorry, that's just dumb. Like we don't have anything better to do right now. Have you seen what it's like out there?" she turned back to the officers. "We wouldn't even have been in the area when we found out about the robbery if we hadn't just been stopping some guy out of Mist from knocking over a store two blocks away. Any other team could have been sent there instead of us and then _they_ would have been in proximity to the museum and _they_ would have gone in and been too late to stop the guy that got away."

There was an extended moment of silence, once she'd finished saying her piece. The officers stared at her, baffled. On the row of chairs where the four of them sat, Sara closed her eyes with a sigh, Michael stared at Sin, and Cisco looked like he was trying to keep a straight face.

"I might not have put it that way specifically, but she makes an excellent point," the director finally spoke, getting the officers' attention back. "As you will be well aware, the last few days have been trying, on all of us. These four have been as instrumental as anyone in maintaining order in the city. Everyone is doing their part, whether they have a badge, or a mask." Sin gave a solid nod at that. The director turned a look to her, and she sat up, 'zipping' her lips.

Just then, there was a knock at the door, and when Sara looked up she spotted her father's face on the other side of the glass, along with Ed Thawne's. Whether or not anyone in that room except her team knew that her father was her father, it still made her feel the tiniest bit like her daddy was coming to pick her up from the principal's office, which was not the most ideal situation at all. The director waved them in, and they stepped into the office. When the two sitting across from him looked back and found two of their colleagues, they got up to shake their hands.

"Sorry to interrupt, only we heard you were at headquarters, and we wanted to make sure everything was… alright," Quentin Lance explained, and Sara could feel Sin looking at her now like she wanted to exchange suits with her right now. Maybe red would fit better.

"Everything's fine, Quentin," Director Heywood told him. "Isn't it?" The two officers looked to one another.

"There is still the matter of the third woman," one of them spoke up. "The one who left. We've seen her in the footage, and the three we arrested all mentioned her."

"Well, it's a busy day," Cisco spoke up. "Sometimes we need to split up, it happens." Sin could have elbowed him in the gut for that one.

"The point is," Sara cut in, "We have told you the truth. We might not all see eye to eye, but if you take a moment to consider all that you know about me, about them, you will understand that we all want the same thing you do. We protect our home. We can worry about whether or not that's enough… after this is all over."

"Are we done here?" the director stood from his chair, as good as saying that, whether or not they were done here, _he_ definitely was.

"Yes, director," the officers spoke as one.

Stepping out of the office, Sara waited until the two of them left before turning back to her father and his partner.

"You didn't have to…" she started to say, but she knew what he was going to say anyway.

"Of course we did," her father insisted.

"Hey," they looked up to find Agent Sharpe jogging up toward them. "Sorry, we just heard about a situation, Snart wanted to see if you and your team might be able to join us on this one, we could use a few more of us out there," she explained, turning to the Green Arrow. Sara turned to her team, then back to the woman she knew as Stargirl.

"Lead the way."

X

"Who is he?" Ruby Arias asked, looking at the completed sketch she helped create for Iris.

"Maybe nobody," she frowned, looking at it, too.

Considering they were working off of a memory that was definitely on the shaky side, and with a twelve-year-old as the artist working the software's controls at her instruction, they had done pretty well for themselves. Whether or not her memory had been accurate, she looked at him and she was as sure as she was ever going to be that this was the guy she'd seen, the same guy Tommy had tried to get her to remember… the same guy who was now potentially working with both of their fathers.

"Hey…" she looked back to Ruby. "I'm really thankful for you helping me with this," she told her, and the girl smiled.

"No problem," she insisted, even though she absolutely looked like she was jumping with pride on the inside for having been able to help. "What are you going to do with it now?"

"Now I need to find my friend…" Iris told her, looking around. She had hoped that he might have been back from the last call he'd gone on, but then it tended to go that they would finish in one place and then be redirected almost instantly. She gave him a call. "Are you guys busy right now?"

"Yes and no, why?" Tommy asked.

"I'm sending you a sketch. That guy you were telling me about, I had Ruby help me work up an image of the guy I remembered, if it's the same one… Hang on." Sending off the sketch to his phone, she waited until he got it and looked at it.

"Woah…"

"Is that him?"

"That's the same guy I was talking about, yeah. Nice work." Ruby, who could hear, too, smiled when he said this, and Iris tried not to chuckle. Give it to Tommy Merlyn to have that effect on people. "I'll let you know if this gets us lined up with another trip over to Haven." After they hung up, Iris turned her chair to face Ruby. "So…" she smiled.

"What?" Ruby looked at her with a shrug. Iris just laughed to herself.

"Never mind. I think you've earned yourself a treat. You, me, Lisa, ten minute break to head down to the coffee shop around the corner?"

"I'll go get her," Ruby dashed off at once. Iris watched her go, just as she spotted Amaya coming her way.

"Hey… all better?" Iris asked her, blinking. If not for the 'scars' on her clothes, there would be no telling the state she'd been in when they'd brought her through here not long ago.

"Yes, so, I need to find the kid's mom and her people, figured I'd throw in with them for a while."

"Sure, well, last I heard, they were somewhere across town, but I can check in to see if they've moved." As she did so, Amaya moved to stand where she could still see her as she worked.

"Another thing. While I'm gone…"

"You want me to keep an eye on Cait," Iris guessed, and Amaya nodded. "Not a problem," she assured her, before pointing to the map on her screen. "There."

"Thank you," Amaya tipped her head to her before hurrying off.

It would be Iris, and Ruby and Lisa, and Cait, heading off to the coffee shop in the end. They'd briefly wondered whether the place would be shut down, with all the breachers running around as they were, but it was open, if fairly deserted. They got their drinks – paid for them despite the girl at the counter offering them on the house – and started back for headquarters.

Being out of the building for those few minutes, it felt like they had been locked in a bubble, being aware of the world but not being in it, and now they saw it again… like most everyone had been forced to hit pause on their lives. It was too quiet.

Iris couldn't help but look at Cait Snow now. The worry over her husband was a constant in her features, but walking on the street now, it felt like there was something more in her, staring off into the distance. She had no choice but to sit back right now, and that had to be rough, now more than ever. Wouldn't it have just been easier if she could take off, and run, to look for Ronnie, or just to go and be Caity Quick, speedster and heroine… It would have been better than standing still, stuck in her own thoughts.

When they got back to headquarters, Iris pulled Ruby back for a moment, leaning to whisper at her ear. _See if she needs any help?_ She gave a discreet nod toward Cait, and Ruby nodded back, moving to fall in step with her, leaving Iris and Lisa behind. The way Iris saw it, the match would be mutually beneficial. Cait had Ronnie to worry herself over, much as she tried not to lose grip. And Ruby, brave as she tried to show herself, missed her mother and worried for her while she was out there all day, and she thrived for anything to occupy herself with… much like Cait did.

Getting back to her desk, Iris checked – again, for the umpteenth time – if she had any updates from John Diggle, or Tommy… anyone… about her brother, and Zari, and Mag, and now Ronnie. Nothing, again… not yet. She thought about them, her brother and Cait's husband, possibly in the same place right now. Were they being treated alright? Could they find a way to get themselves out of… wherever they were? Not knowing where that 'wherever' was, that only made the whole thing feel just a bit more helpless. Two Earths, so many quarters, and they could be on any one of them…

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	25. DAY 050 (vol 2, ch 25)

_Day 50 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 25_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

Amaya knew why she needed to get back out there as soon as possible, and to some extent she felt a tiny bit selfish for it, even if she was lending her help to the city just as she'd been doing it for going on three days now. But she couldn't just stay back there at headquarters, she needed to do _something_ , and being here allowed her to do just that. The selfish part of it was that she knew that was exactly what Cait wanted, too, even though in her case it wasn't possible.

She felt like she'd failed her friend, her friends… If she'd been smarter about it, maybe they wouldn't have gotten the chance to take Ronnie. Of course it wasn't exactly _her_ who made the call, not at that point. She'd been Killer Frost at the time, and _those_ decisions were hers to make, while Amaya had been lying dormant. She could lay all the blame she wanted at the feet of her alter ego, but deep down it still felt like the both of them were not of so separate a mind that it didn't all balance in the end and she had as much blame for what had happened as Killer Frost did.

So she would go out there again, would find others she might have helped. Jim Olsen, Kendra Saunders, Samantha Arias… They were in the same boat as she was. They had friends presently on Breach, helping through that other situation, they had a friend who'd been kidnapped, too… Zari… She'd met her before, helped her… they'd shared their stories… Amaya really hoped she was alright, too.

She found the trio where Iris had told her they would be, and by the looks of it, not only had Iris told them to expect her, but she hadn't come a minute too soon. From what she could see, some breacher or another had gotten it in their mind that it would be really funny to leave a balcony full of people trapped on a compromised structure. Wild Dog, Artemis, and Ruby's mother, they were working to both find a way to get them down, had managed to commandeer some kind of cherry picker, but it was clear from where she was standing that they might not have enough time to get them all down before it was too late.

The shift happened like a chill running through her spine, and she didn't miss a beat, using jets of ice to stabilize the balcony as best she could.

"It might not hold," she warned the others, who took this turn and moved straight into action. One by one they had helped the trapped people down to the street and away from where the balcony would inevitably collapse when the ice melted.

"We heard what happened, are you okay?" Samantha asked.

"I can heal," was all she could make herself say, and maybe she gave off the impression that she didn't want to talk about it, because they dropped the subject at once.

They moved into the building, seeking out the breachers behind the structure damage, but they were nowhere to be found.

"Think they'll do the same thing somewhere else?" Kendra asked the other three. Jim reached out to ARGUS, and a moment later Iris' voice was in his ear.

"Can you try and find the breachers who hit this building?" he asked her.

"Give me a minute," Iris told him. "Yes, got 'em. They went north, right before your team showed up," she informed him and he groaned.

"We saw them," he turned to Kendra and Samantha, and Amaya guessed they were remembering them now, too. "Get back in the van, I'll follow you guys in that thing, we might need it again," he told them, dashing for the cherry picker. And they were off, Kendra getting behind the wheel of the van, driving up the street as she and Amaya and Samantha kept their eyes on the buildings on either side of them, while they heard Jim following up behind them.

"Is that them?" Amaya pointed, spotting a couple of boys who couldn't have been more than seventeen or eighteen.

"Yes, it is," Kendra sped up, a press in her voice that said 'and they're not getting away this time.'

X

On the first night of this entire crisis, they'd had to deal with that single crossing point and how many breachers it had spewed out, all of them just standing there, protecting that opening, so that more of them could cross, and then… then they'd gone in for the attack, and it had taken so many of them, collectively, before they had managed to get in there and take them down, ensuring that no more would be able to cross there in the process. There had been many more of them on site at the time, still not enough that they weren't outnumbered. They'd gotten through it.

They were still outnumbered here, three or so of the breachers for each of the nine of them. This wasn't about a breach this time though, and they had stood discreetly looking on for several minutes before they were sure enough of what they were seeing.

Down in the middle of a high school's football field, they stood in near perfect rows, they counted twenty-six of them, facing a twenty-seventh who stood before them, talking to them. Those of the Waverider team, with the experience of visiting the various quarters repeatedly in recent years, would tell the Green Arrow and her people how they spotted breachers from a handful of different quarters down there. And the one who was addressing them, like a marching general, they were certain she came from War. More than that, they would say she was aligned to the enemy, going by the prosthetic hand and leg that she wore.

"Is it just me or have we returned all of these back to their quarters before?" Ava asked her teammates. "Not in the last few days, I mean before that."

"It's not just you," Leonard replied. He'd been looking at all of those faces, too. He never forgot one, ever, and in all he and his team had been doing, remembering faces was near vital. He looked at those twenty-six breachers and he didn't just know that he'd dealt with them before, he knew where each of them had been returned to, when, and in what circumstances. All of these, they would fall in the category of 'eventual repeaters,' and he had never been so annoyed at his own correctness.

"Is she giving them instructions?" Sara asked, looking to the one standing before the mass of breachers.

"Maybe," her father told her, standing next to her.

"So how are we playing this?" Lucy asked. "Either we wait until they split up and ambush them but run the risk of some of them getting away, or we take them by surprise, here and now, and it's the day before yesterday all over again." Sara's hand moved to rest at her side, the deep slice that still pained her.

"Look at how they're standing," Michael told her, standing behind her. They all looked, and they understood what he was getting at. It was not much of a surprise to find them clustered with those of their own quarters, War here, Mist there, Light, Dark, Haven… The assumption, the hope, was that when they did leave here, they would leave in those same clusters. Then again, they might not, so… what choice would they make?

"We have five quarters in there, not to mention the little general. There are nine of us. If we split up, some of us will have to go alone. So who takes who?" Cisco asked.

"Give me the five from War," Michael declared easily.

"I have those four out of Mist," Leonard followed.

"Ed and I can do the Haven five," Quentin looked to his partner, getting a nod.

"Hey, you, me, those six Dark ones?" Sin held out a fist toward Cisco and he bumped it.

"You two have the six from Light?" Sara asked Ava and Lucy. "I want her," she nodded to the back of the little general.

"Deal," Ava agreed, as Lucy chimed in with a tap to her fellow agent and roommate's shoulder.

"Good, now look alive, we're on," Leonard told them, as the mass of breachers started to loosen up and, as hoped, they kept to their clusters and started in opposite directions. The little general stayed on the field. "Meet back at the jump ship when this is over, keep your channels open and call for help if you need it." And they split off after their targets.

Sara stayed behind, never breaking eye contact with the girl on the field. In time, she suspected the girl had felt her gaze. Still, she stayed right where she was, as though to tell Sara 'if you want to take me on so much, what are you waiting for?' Never to keep a girl waiting, Sara had started silently down from where she stood in hiding and made her way down toward the field, where the one she'd dubbed the little general turned and met her face to face.

The name had been granted by her stature and what little of it there was, but seeing her face now, Sara couldn't say that the girl was any older than… sixteen, seventeen? Yet her eyes felt older, harder. They showed her exactly how all those other breachers, some three times her age and more, would have gathered before her and did as she demanded.

For all of that, Sara still felt just… Not pity, no. She thought back to those days and weeks in Haven, after her money had run out and before Michael had come to her aid, what they had demanded of her to keep going. _This_ girl was from War, she knew, and for what she knew of the place, the road to survival, to thriving, was as treacherous there as it came. If that was what she'd had to make of herself, then that was that. It didn't mean she'd let her do whatever she'd set out to do here.

"Have you come to stop me?" the little general demanded, her voice as hard as her gaze.

"What would I be stopping exactly?" Sara asked, matching strength for strength, starting a dialogue.

"This place, is it your home? Your Earth?" asked the little general.

"Yes."

"I follow the War Maker's path," the girl lifted her chin. "I keep on walking, regardless of obstacles."

"Commendable," Sara told her, and she meant it.

"You have no idea what it even means. Not in a place like this. But I will show you. We will show you."

" _And_ this is where I do the stopping you part," Sara sighed. The little general smiled.

"You're welcome to try."

X

 **COFFEE SHOP NEAR ARGUS HQ**

 **ONE HOUR LATER**

"Did you?" Laurel asked. "Did you stop her?"

"I had her… I was going to bring her back. She didn't want to go back," Sara lowered her head. "I missed it, or I… I never thought she would… She had a blade, hidden in prosthetic hand. She used it on herself." Neither of them spoke now.

After everything today, after this, they'd told her to take the rest of the day. Her father wanted to stay with her. Michael, Sin, Cisco, they all offered it. The Waverider crew… But all she could think about was her big sister, and not even thinking about the day before, she'd called her, asked to meet, and maybe it was there in her voice that something had happened and she wasn't even thinking about the fact that Laurel had been upset with her… that she needed her. And she'd come at once. She'd listened to her story.

"She had put up with so much, gotten through so much. But when it came down to it… she was still a scared, desperate kid."

Her hands were still shaking, and they looked just… raw, like she'd been scrubbing at them very hard. Laurel picked them up, raw hands met with hands still weak, wrapped in bandages. Sara looked up to meet her sister's gaze, and she found compassion in those eyes, found, whether returned to her or merely borrowed for a time, her sister, loving, supporting sister, her Laurel. Her own eyes had been locked in a state of looking as though she was crying without actually shedding a tear, but as she looked at her sister now, the tears did come.

Somewhere under the shock of the end of the encounter she'd had with the girl, she knew… She knew that they were all being manipulated in this, the breachers as much as the rest of them. The breachers were shown the way, told to go, and the rest of them did the only thing they could do, they would send them back the way they'd come. The girl… she couldn't make herself call her the little general anymore… she could have just kept on going, back in War. And even though a part of her tried to say that it would have been better because she'd still be alive, a great part of her knew that would have been disregarding what she was going back to, and how it had just broken through every inch of her bravado in a snap.

Somewhere along whatever chain of command was happening out there, the same people who'd sent that girl to Main had also sent the girls who'd held Laurel's building as they'd done, and as varied as their circumstances were, it still left her to look at all those breachers a little differently, whether they'd come here seeking shelter or seeking mayhem… She didn't even know anymore… It had been too much… It was still too much…

"Sara…" She looked at her sister. "You couldn't have known." _Couldn't I?_ She'd let herself get caught up in the image… maybe because the girl had done the same. She'd been so convinced that she was in control, and she had been… until she wasn't…

Laurel had driven her home. Contrary to popular belief by some – like Sin – she didn't in fact spend every single night in the clock tower. A lot of them, no doubt, but then that was the thing about having the clock tower but also having the apartment. When it got to be too much, and there would be those times when it did, then she would step back, and she would come here, and for as much as the clock tower could make her feel safe and in control, her apartment could do it, too, in a whole other way.

She hadn't been here in days, of course, what with everything that had been happening, and though she knew it wasn't over yet, and somehow she'd be back out there again in the morning, for the moment of what was left of this day she was just Sara Lance, not the Green Arrow. And she had her big sister with her. This had been their apartment, very briefly, before she had disappeared. When she'd returned, she'd eventually discovered that, while Laurel had moved out, she continued to pay rent on the place. She hadn't wanted to let it go, let _her_ go. And then it had become Sara's home all over again.

That day, Laurel had given her sister her marching orders, sent her to shower, fixed her something to eat in the meantime and had it waiting on the table when she came out again. After she'd cleared out her plate, Laurel had checked her bandages, finally able to take in the extent of the cut, along with a number of other scars, healed but very present. Sara didn't say anything when she felt her looking, and Laurel didn't ask.

They'd gone to sit on the couch, turned on the television, not to really watch it with any intent, more to cut the silence. It made it easier, eventually, to speak.

"One thing," Laurel said. "Just one. Why didn't you just come to me first? Tell me what you were going to do?" Sara didn't reply at first, and Laurel knew that she might have waited, that now was really not the…

"If you knew, then you might have been implicated."

"By the police?" Laurel asked, looking at her.

"By your mother," Sara looked back at her. "She got rid of me because I knew her secrets. What would she have done to you if you'd been one of the ones that brought her down? The Green Arrow brought her down, and you… you didn't know. You weren't involved. She couldn't touch you."

They stared at the television. In time they vaguely watched it. And after that Sara fell asleep, her head against her sister's shoulder. She would sleep until morning. Laurel stayed by her side every minute of it.

She looked around the apartment, looked at all the things, the pictures, the objects, all of them, and she thought about her little sister, thought about everything she'd discovered about her in the past two days, the isolation and the mental confusion she'd undergone in Haven, the force that had driven her motivation, her return, all she had become. She looked at the apartment, and the thought back to a moment, trapped in her penthouse, struck with this foolish notion that she had never meant to Sara what Sara had meant to her. She looked at the apartment and she felt loved. She looked at her sister, and she knew peace.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	26. DAY 052 (vol 2, ch 26)

_Day 52 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 26_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **SOMEWHERE…**

Vandal Savage stood before the great window into the room where the two of the captives were presently sleeping, while the other two paced the length of the room from opposite ends, seeming to be stretching out their legs. Whether that was actually their intent or they were still attempting to work out a way to escape, it remained unclear. And it didn't matter. They would never find a way out. As for whether they would ever get to go home, well… He supposed it would all depend. It could be that, at some point, that a death and a discovery of said dead body would be just what was needed for things to carry on unfolding as they needed to unfold.

The flash of two breaches flared at his back within seconds of one another. When he turned around, the breaches were gone and in their place were his two retrieval teams. To one side, Mirror Mistress, Livewire, and Top, and to the other, Captain Cold and Heat Wave.

"Miss Stein, Miss Wells, Miss Star, Mr. Palmer, Mr. Heywood," he tipped his head to each.

"You called us back. Has something changed?" Lily Stein asked.

"In a manner of speaking," Vandal told her. "For the foreseeable future, you are to remain out of Haven Quarter." The command took them all by surprise, and for a few seconds they stood in silence, looking at him. "That's all. As you were," Vandal told them, turning back to look into the room. For near on a minute nothing happened, but finally there was the flare of a breach opening again, and a second following a few seconds later.

X

The boys were sleeping. Well, they were lying down and looked asleep. Zari didn't buy that either of them was asleep though, and one look to Mag, pacing the floor just as she was, and she knew the alien woman was of the same opinion. It wasn't as though their present state allowed them a whole lot of privacy, and if any of them wanted some alone time without looking like it, inviting some person or another to come and try to get them talking, 'sleep' was about all they had aside from walking.

Zari had a good feeling of what had Wallace pretending. She'd gotten to know him the most, obviously, of her three co-captives, having spent a stretch of time just the two of them, and she didn't know what the guy's father looked like, but she was sure that one look inside his thoughts would show that was exactly who he was thinking about. He was certain that his father was behind all this, and the more of them ended up here, captive, the more guilt he would feel, much as he tried not to say anything. It wouldn't matter how many times they told him this wasn't his fault, he would still carry that guilt.

As for Ronnie, well that was easy enough, for how little time he'd been with them. He worried about his wife, about his baby… All the family _she_ had was her team. Jim, Kendra, Lisa, Samantha and Ruby. But this wasn't the same thing, and she could only imagine what he was feeling. From what he'd told them, he'd only just found out about the baby a couple days ago. It was all new, and then the stress of everything happening out there, now this…

She hardly knew the guy, but it felt like, if it came down to only one of the two of them getting out of here, she'd rather he go, get back to his family. It would be worth it.

"They were all here for a couple minutes," Mag muttered as they passed one another in their pacing. Zari tried not to let her eyes sweep to the side, to the wall separating them from their captors. Rather than to wait for their paths to cross again for another handful of words, Zari turned and moved until she could fall in step with Mag.

"All, so the guys, the girls, and mystery man?" she asked.

"Yes," Mag confirmed. "Then the girls left, and the guys, now mystery man is on his own again."

"What do you think that's about?" Zari wondered.

"The guys and the girls all showed up almost at once, like they were summoned. Whatever it was about, it didn't take long, and then they left again." For a few seconds they walked in silence, thinking. "How many more of us will they take?"

"I don't know," Zari sighed. Was that what the summons had been about? Were they given a name, a target? There was still no telling whether they had been taken at random or on purpose, but then… there had to be _some_ purpose. All of them were somehow connected to what was happening on Main and Breach, but that didn't mean it couldn't have been any one of them that got grabbed. What if they took Ronnie's wife? "I keep thinking maybe it's not as hard as we're making it out to look."

"What do you mean?" Mag asked.

"It's just that… the way this place looks, right away it feels impossible, and maybe that's what they want it to feel like. The lack of doors, the fake windows, things appearing and disappearing, the mirror tricks, the dampener… There could be a way out, and it's so evident but we don't see it because we let ourselves get distracted," she laughed with frustration. "Wallace cut up most of his finger tips trying to pry the floor tiles off, thinking there might be a way out through there, when it was just us and it was still new to us." Mag blinked, looking back at the 'sleeping' boy like she'd been wondering what had happened to his fingers all this time.

"Want me to start punching some walls?" she asked.

"Maybe wait until mystery guy goes off on another walk or whatever he does when he leaves," Zari suggested.

"Right," Mag nodded.

"How bad was it in War, before they took you?" Zari asked after they'd been walking in silence for a couple minutes. She'd been trying to work up toward asking ever since she'd heard about how Mag had been there when the girls had grabbed her, ever since she'd found out what was happening out there. Mag didn't reply right away, making it all too easy for Zari to sink into rambling. "I haven't been there in years," she went on. "Sometimes I think it'll be so different that I wouldn't recognize it, but the truth is… it never really changes, does it? It just keeps going, keeps destroying, keeps taking."

"What did it take from you?" Mag asked, in a tone of voice that suggested she'd had plenty of things and people taken from her, too.

"My mother, my father… my brother… everyone. Last thing I ever told my father was a promise. I promised him I'd survive." She looked around the nightmare room as she said this, and it set her voice to quivering. She looked to Ronnie, pretending to sleep on the ground. Would her father let her break her promise if it meant another family didn't have to get broken?

"All I know is how it was before they took me," Mag told her. "I think you know what it would do to the people out there, for the WQI to be hit like that."

"I do," Zari replied quietly. There had been plenty of attacks in that city, in all the years she'd lived there, but the infirmaries… those were off-limits, they just were. If there weren't limits, then none of them would have survived as long as they'd done. Some would say maybe they were better off that way, but she wasn't one of those, and neither had her parents been.

"The Waverider, they were out there though, they were doing something, helping," Mag promised her.

"The Waverider," Zari nodded to herself, putting all amounts of faith she had in that crew. She may not have called War Quarter home anymore, but deep down… deep down it would always matter to her. If it wasn't there anymore, then the place where she'd come from, the place where she'd been someone's daughter, someone's sister… that would be gone, and they would be gone, too, more than they'd already been.

"What were they like? Your family?" Mag asked.

"We were Tradespeople," Zari told her, unsure whether Mag would know what that meant. "My father helped rebuild houses, and my mother ran the kitchens at the Trades. She'd never turn anyone away, especially when we'd be called to shelter. She never let anyone go hungry, especially children," she recounted, a smile on her face. "My brother… he wanted to join the resistance. That was our secret, me and him, still is." Losing him, that might have been the hardest part, more than her parents even.

They continued walking in silence for a while after that. The two of them could see now the guys, for as long as they'd been 'sleeping' were now both of them staring back at them. Zari wondered if they'd been listening as she'd been talking of home. Her confidences would remain just that, with the four of them. It was the kind of knowledge that came without needing to be spoken, a contract between captives.

Looking at Mag, Zari knew she had to have a story of her own. If she ever wanted to share it, they would listen. If she wasn't ready, they wouldn't force it out of her. They just kept walking, letting the time go by, waiting for the next moment they would be able to pool their resources together and see about finding a way out of here. Then they'd find those meta girls, and they'd find the gun guys, and their mystery guy. They would find them all and get them thrown somewhere before they could throw anyone else into their nightmare room.

X

 **BREACH EARTH, SILENT QUARTER**

So few of the quarters had been pulled into the conflict as of yet, though there were so many more out there, just waiting to jump in, and they knew it was only a matter of time before new players were called on to the board.

Crossing into this place as yet unexplored, it hadn't taken Lily, Jesse and Lyra very long to understand where it had gotten its name. The moment the breach had closed, they were in total silence. Each one of them would have something of the same reaction. They'd moved around, look around, they'd clap their hands together or stomp their foot or even talk… but no sound ever came. Jesse had tried screaming, and there was nothing, even though she could just feel her throat working.

"What do we do?" Lyra asked, mouthing each word as clearly as she could. Both Lily and Jesse shook their heads. After a moment, Lily pulled out her phone and set to typing.

"This is the best we've got." Jesse pulled the phone from her, erasing the words and typing her own.

"Why won't he let us go to Haven?" she asked, showing the screen. The others shrugged. Jesse erased again, the new message typed with a sort of conflicted look over her face. "My father." Lily held out her hand and Jesse gave her back the phone.

"If we got him out of there, what would we even do with him?" she typed. Jesse could only look at the words. She had no answer.

Right then, Lyra waved her hands in their faces to get their attention before pointing up the street from where they stood. They looked up, and they saw at once. Raymond and Nate had shown up, too. They were still in that moment of confusion, experiencing the silence for the first time. Raymond was miming 'writing' with his hand when he looked up and spotted them looking back at him. They waved, giving the kind of smile that said 'die, losers.' He tapped Nate's arm and pointed toward them so his partner would see them, too.

Nate started walking toward them, Raymond following. As they went, Nate pulled a small, thin notebook from his pocket, along with a pen, started to write even as he was approaching. When he came to a stop, he held up his notebook.

"Well if it isn't the B Team." He was smirking. Lily clicked her fingers together – silently – for him to hand over notebook and pen. When Nate did, she turned to a blank page, made a few quick scribbles, then tossed the notebook back to him. He grabbed it on the fly and looked at the page.

"Nice guns, boys, compensating?" she'd written. He didn't need to write back, tilting his head in a very clear assurance that there was absolutely no need for that.

Jesse held out her hand for the pen from Lily, which she got, though holding out her hand for the notebook only got her a shake of the head. She sighed and wrote in her palm for lack of another surface, then turned it out for them to see. _HAVEN?_ Their faces sobered at that. That was where they were from, too. The girls had figured it out, from previous interactions, just as they figured the two of them had been getting in trouble back home. Still, whatever any of them did, home was home. Some of them might have been all too glad to write it off, like Lily and War, but Jesse wasn't ready to write off Haven, and one look at them told her Raymond and Nate felt the same.

Raymond got the pen back from her, took the notebook, then wrote and showed them.

"Follow us."

He opened a breach, and he walked through it with Nate. The breach stayed open, and the girls looked to one another, uncertain. They peered through the breach and recognized the other side easy enough. Dark Quarter. Night in another quarter was one thing, but the permanent night of Dark was something else. They could hear the ambient sounds on the other side, breaking the silence, and it was like a spell, drawing them along. They crossed into Dark, and the breach was closed.

For having found their way back to somewhere they could talk, they spent a solid minute in a silence of their own making. This was just not something they had any care for, having a common interest between them. Yet here they were.

"It's that weapon, isn't it?" Nate suggested, the first to speak. No one needed to say it, they all knew that had to be it. They'd ruled it out just that morning, so somehow that must have moved the quarter into fair game territory.

"Got family there?" Lyra asked.

"Not if you ask them," Raymond replied. It was as good as saying 'yes, and we don't want them getting hurt.' There was silence again, because they knew a few things for certain. One, they would be made to regret being caught going where they were told not to go, for any reason. Two, they were all 'gifted' with a confidence that convinced them they could get in and out without being caught. And three, the only thing to cancel out their confidence was the knowledge that they would not be the ones to suffer the consequences.

"Would you do it?" Nate asked Jesse. "Would you still go into Haven to get whoever it is that's there?" She stared at him in the starlight for a moment, lifting her hand filled with crackling energy, brought it closer to his face to light it. He didn't flinch.

"Do you think if I say yes that you can run to boss man and tell him that _our_ team's going against orders, so maybe they'll get your people out?" she asked.

"Maybe I did, maybe I didn't, but now that you mention it…" he kept her gaze.

In a moment neither Raymond nor Nate could have told the stars from the ground, as they felt the breadth of Lyra's power bearing down on them. Somewhere, above, below, who knew, they were only vaguely aware of her presence.

"And what's to stop us from telling on you? We can be very convincing."

"Let me fry them," Jesse glared from her side. "Not even charcoal, just a nice sear…" Lyra nodded at her, indicating she liked that idea a lot. The energy in Jesse's hands coursed through her entire body, it seemed, so much that, to a place like Dark, she must have looked like some living star or something.

"As fun as that would be, and really I am this close to trapping them in a mirror I am _that_ sick of these gun boys," Lily came up to stand with them, "We need them as much as they need us, and I have a feeling they know that. So let's try something else instead." Lyra and Jesse looked at her, looked at the two men writhing on the ground, then frowned. Lyra released them and they crumpled to the ground, breathing hard. As disoriented as they were, they were still pissed off enough to try and reach for their weapons.

"Hey!" Jesse zapped them both and they fell on to their backs, while Lyra and Lily retrieved the dropped weapons.

"All of you, so ready to get shooting, not even listening to reason," Lily shook her head at the pair of them. "Need a moment to compose yourselves? You're looking a bit green there…" she stepped back, as did Lyra, just before the pair of them could get sick.

"My bad," Lyra told them, though it was debatable whether or not she actually felt bad.

"If we're going to treat this like a competition… then let's compete," Lily told the men on the ground. "What do you say?"

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	27. DAY 054 (vol 2, ch 27)

_Day 54 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 27_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

"Hey," Cait's voice pulled Iris out of her thoughts, pacing about in her 'room.' She turned to find the grounded speedster standing just outside the door.

"Do they need me back there?" Iris asked, briefly concerned that something else had happened while she'd been taking a moment.

"No, it's alright," Cait promised her, motioning for her to sit, walking in to join her. "I heard about what happened in Haven. Are you okay?"

"Sure, I…" Iris started to say, then sighed. Even she didn't believe herself. "I just… I didn't need another thing to worry about, and it feels more like two or three more things instead of one. My brother is missing, my father is up to something, my city is under attack, my best friend is out there, everything's a mess…" she counted off.

"I know," Cait bowed her head, and Iris quietly reached out for her hand. Most any of them had something, _someone_ , affected by all that was happening. And here was Cait Snow, with an early stage pregnancy, no doubt doing her best to ensure that baby grew safely, all the while dealing with the stress of a kidnapped husband, a city in trouble, people in trouble, unable to use the powers she had to go out and help them. She was doing all she could, they could see, but beneath all that…

"It feels like I should be out there," Iris told her, and even though the reasons and the motivations were different, she knew if anyone would understand that it would be her. "But I can't just leave everyone here."

"Are you able to do both from here?" Cait wondered.

"I can barely function with what I'm already dealing with here without adding on. I mean look," she handed her the tablet she'd brought with her. It showed the same map they'd be working off of out there, back where Iris should have been sitting at the moment. Cait took it in her hands, as Iris pointed out some areas. "New quarters."

"Oh…" Cait's eyes went wide. Up to this point, for how chaotic it had all been, they had been 'fortunate' enough to only have to deal with breachers from a handful of quarters. War, Mist, Dark, Haven, Future, maybe Light… It was a lot, but they managed. But now there were new colors added to the map, showing breachers from many more quarters starting to trickle in.

"How am I going to try and find out what's going on in Haven on top of all that?"

"You have Lisa Snart, and Ruby's picking up on things quick, and there's me… I can always use a new distraction," she managed a small smile, and Iris returned it. "We'll figure something out."

X

It wasn't as though they would just run off to the next block and find another situation in progress, but being speedsters did enable the two of them to move from one location to another sooner than others out there. On the one hand it was practical in that they got more troublemaking breachers off the streets than others, but then on the other hand it also meant they just kept going and going, hardly any time to let themselves set one 'call' aside before jumping on to the next one. After a while, they just had to stop, and breathe, and clear their heads, all the while trying not to fall into some thought like 'what if we stopped and because of that someone gets killed?'

And then there were other moments where, by mercy of something completely unexpected happening, their minds did clear very suddenly.

"What…" Thea blinked, as she and her brother skidded to a stop mid run.

"Where are those guys from?" Oliver asked himself outloud, forgetting for a moment that he had an open line to people back at ARGUS who could answer him.

"Weighted Quarter," Iris' voice sounded in his ear and Thea's.

"What's that?" Thea asked.

"High gravity, far as I can see," Iris replied.

"Right… so that'll explain… that then?" Thea looked to her brother before looking back to the building presently being scaled by four people as though they could just about fly up the side of it. "Is there a low gravity one, too?" she half joked, then, "There is, isn't there…"

"Floated Quarter," Iris confirmed.

"Of course there is," Thea sighed. "They don't look like they just came for a rock climbing vacation or something, so how do we do this?"

"Get them down, get them restrained quick," Oliver told her. "Got a feeling they'll slip out of our hands easy if we let them." He was trying to figure out what they were trying to do, where they were going, but he couldn't think of anything. So they'd have to ask after. First things first, they'd need something to restrain them…

Running up the front of the building, they'd scoop up one of the breachers, bringing them back down to street level, get them tied up and tied down, then run up for a second and do the same. When they'd both gotten their two, they came to a stop and looked down to the four of them writhing against the heavy ropes around them.

"What were you all up to?" Oliver asked them.

"Twenty-second floor, I'd say," Thea looked back up to the building before turning back to her brother, who gave her a look. "Sorry," she mouthed.

Whatever they were intending to do, none of the four looked interested in sharing. So the best they could do was to shuffle them off to the nearest transport back to headquarters for a return to their quarter, and go on to whatever they'd run into next.

X

"Up ahead, on the next intersection, turn left," Lisa's voice was in their ears, something to make three out of the four passengers in the van feel almost like it could have been a regular day for their team.

"What is it?" Kendra asked.

"The pool's up there," Samantha pointed out, for a moment thrown into 'mom navigation,' thinking of how many times she'd driven through here with her daughter.

"Yeah, so are the breachers. They came in, spooked off a starter class and a water aerobics class, now they're sitting in there like they own the place," Lisa told them.

"Now that's just rude," Jim shook his head. "Where are these ones from?"

"Uh…" Lisa paused, then, "Frozen Quarter?"

"Is that so?" Killer Frost sat up curiously at this. "Then we should get along just fine."

The van pulled up in front of the building to find a cluster of confused toddlers and parents and a group of elders, gathered and wrapped in towels and robes or standing in their bathing suits and swim caps, most of them barefooted.

"Alright, folks, step aside, please," Jim called, as he stepped out along with Kendra, Samantha, and Killer Frost. They were allowed through, and they walked through the doors, moving toward the pool. What they came across looked a lot more like a pool party than an invasion.

There were near on a dozen of them, all of them looking to be in their late teens to early twenties, splashing along save for a quartet, spread around and standing guard, perhaps, against anyone intending to get in their way. When they spotted Jim and his team, they started moving back together, approaching with a rough step.

Killer Frost walked up ahead of the others at this, and they showed their cluelessness in how their surprise at the icy woman's presence instantly stalled them where they stood.

The breachers in the pool were swimming around, for the most part, in their clothes, not that they seemed to care. They were having an excellent time, splashing and jumping and swimming. Then a crust of ice got to creeping along the surface, and the reaction in them was one of reflex, like it called up a touch of home. They all made for the ladders, to get out quick, but she was faster, and soon they were all frozen in place.

"I'm guessing this looks a lot more like home, no?" Killer Frost asked them with a smirk.

"Alright, let's just get them gathered up," Samantha came up to her side. "Lisa, we'll need a couple transports," she told her friend back at headquarters before looking back to the frozen… Frozen kids staring fixedly at Killer Frost, and looking at her, too. "Hey…" Samantha tapped her arm.

"Don't worry, they'll be fine," Killer Frost told her. Samantha looked back to her teammates, who met her gaze with a hesitant shrug. They hardly knew the woman, sure, had been paired with her by circumstance… but Zari knew her, Zari trusted her… so they had to think they could trust her, too. Zari… They hoped she was alright, wherever she was.

X

"Should we go check on her?" Sin asked Michael as they were going onward toward the next destination given to them by Iris back at ARGUS.

"If she needs us, she'll reach out," he responded, which was as good as saying 'no, leave her be.' Sin didn't argue against this, which said plenty of how much she felt for her friend, her partner, her mentor… closest thing she had to family. If the museum thing had been bad, Sara's encounter with the girl from War had just been… beyond words. They'd come back to find her and she'd still been there, trying to stop the girl's bleeding, even though she _had_ stopped bleeding… she was dead. But Sara still held her, until Michael had pulled her away.

So now it was just the three of them. Sin, Michael, Cisco… Speedy, Spartan, and Arsenal… without the Green Arrow.

"The breachers are that way." They stopped, looked up, just as the speaker dropped in and landed before them. It was Cynthia.

"Where have you been?" Cisco stepped up, his voice rising just a bit. He couldn't help it, after she'd bailed out on them back at the museum.

"Do you know where these ones are from?" she asked Michael and Sin, not answering the question.

"Iris said something about a Nature Quarter," Michael informed her.

"Vague, although it might explain whatever they're doing back there," Cynthia indicated for them to follow.

"So she just ignored you, huh?" Sin tapped Cisco's arm. He glared at her before trailing after Michael. "Hey, cheer up," Sin followed with a smirk.

There were only two of them, two women possibly in their forties. It was unclear what they had set out to do. When they found them they were standing in the middle of a parking lot and looking around, a frantic confusion in their eyes.

"Ladies?" Cynthia called to them, and they both looked up and toward her, momentarily ready to pounce. "I would not advise that," Cynthia told them, and her tone was as good of a deterent as anything.

"This place… this place is dead…" one of the women spoke quietly.

"Is that a statement or a threat?" Cisco asked, calling out to them. The women looked at the ground, the pavement underneath their feet.

"I'm going to go with statement," Sin shrugged. "Nature Quarter, right? Maybe it's like one big forest or something."

"Did someone send you here?" Michael asked, and the women looked to him, then to each other. "What were you told to do?" They were not fighters, it was plain to see. And just as plain to see, the four who had accosted them _were_ fighters. The women could not hope to stand against them, and knowing better than to provoke, they had surrendered. They would not speak a word, but then so few of them did.

X

The jump ship team had been weaving from one Earth to the other, to this quarter and that quarter, and plenty more over the last few hours, that they could no longer keep count and would instead have to consult flight logs to say how many trips they'd made. After having all of six quarters to juggle for the last couple of days, suddenly the number had jumped closer on a dozen of them.

"Why now?" Agent Sharpe had to ask as they were sailing back in from Weighted and had to set the jump ship down to run diagnostics. "Why throw in with more quarters all of a sudden?" she asked, turning to face the quartet sitting behind her. There was a brief silence as they considered the question… It had been on all of their minds in some way or another since they'd started picking up breachers to return to Nature, to Frozen, and Desert, to Weighted, and Floated…

"For some reason or another, they needed a darker smoke screen?" Agent Lane guessed.

"Either we got close… or they did…" Ed offered.

"You've got active breachers at the movie theater three blocks East," Cait Snow's voice was heard through the jump ship, cutting the conversation and throwing them back to task. Active breachers, meaning they weren't just waiting on a transport for once. No one had approached them as of yet.

So the jump ship set down, and the crew stepped out, heading for the theater. By all accounts it should have been closed. The old theater was only open in the evening, on weekends… But the doors had been pried open, the glass broken… The five approached with caution, though whoever was inside didn't seem concerned with keeping quiet. Cait had already identified where this bunch was from, though they might have guessed by their behavior. When you came from a place without sound and into one _with_ sound, for the first time, you were bound to be as overwhelmed as you would be just fascinated.

There were three of them, a man, a teenaged girl and a smaller girl, possibly a father and his daughters. This theater occasionally featured live orchestras, and the breachers had come upon the instruments. They would curiously trigger one instrument or another to give off its sound, then just as soon stick their hands over their ears, startled.

"Ava?" Lucy turned to her colleague and roommate, most fluent in the SQSL. She nodded and moved ahead of the group, closer to the instruments and the breachers. The vast majority of ARGUS agents in a position to potentially have to deal with breachers, specifically breachers of Silent Quarter, would have a basic knowledge of the sign language used by the residents of the city were no sound, no voice, was ever heard. Some, like Ava Sharpe, had more than a passing knowledge.

The first to see her coming toward them was the small girl, who let out a gasp, tapping rapidly to a bracelet around her wrist, which gave off a flash of blue light, drawing her father and sister's attention. They looked up, too, toward the woman walking toward them. They looked ready to run until she started to address them.

"I won't hurt you," she signed. The girls looked to their father, who held his arm out to them so they would come closer to him. "I'm with ARGUS," Ava signed. "Were you sent here?"

"I am all they have," the man signed.

"I understand. I promise you won't be harmed. But you're not meant to be here. We need to take you back," Ava went on, indicating the others. The small girl was looking at her, curious again.

"You speak?" she signed. Ava smiled, crouching to her eye level.

"I do," she spoke and signed at the same time. The girl gasped at this, and hearing the sound, her sound, she jumped, smiled. Ava looked back to the crew. What were they supposed to do with them?

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

They were packed in around three neighboring stations, Iris in the middle, Cait to the left, Lisa to the right, and Ruby moving to assist when she was called on. Cait was right; she learned quick. The whole thing moved like harmony, and it had to. In the middle of it all, Iris felt she was properly finding her rhythm now, the joint focus giving her something to use against the storm of brotherly/fatherly/hometown concerns.

They were tracking the new addition of breachers from as yet uninvolved quarters, as much as those of the previously encountered ones. They were following the progress of the return efforts. And they were in constant contact with developments back in Haven, in particular where the search for whoever had shot the grenade into the precinct was concerned.

All four of them had thoughts for loved ones in the field, thoughts for loved ones taken from them, kidnapped… But if they carried on with what they had set out to do then maybe, maybe, all of them would get to come home by the time this was all over.

"No… No, no," Cait breathed, looking at her screen.

"What is it?" Iris asked, even as Ruby moved to her side.

"Are all of those dots breachers?" she asked, and Iris and Lisa moved to look at the screen, too.

"This is like that first night all over again, isn't it?" Iris looked to Cait, who nodded. The breachers had yet to be identified, but it wouldn't be long, they just had to wait… "Any of you guys know if this is bad or…" she looked to Lisa and Cait, but they didn't know. The best they could do was to put out the call. "Go ahead, you caught it," she tipped her head to Cait, who patched in their heroes around the city.

"Be advised, there's a breach unloading a lot of people out of Desert Quarter. Counting twenty-three and rising. I'm sending out coordinates, redirect as soon as you can. Signal your movements."

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	28. DAY 056 (vol 2, ch 28)

_Day 56 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 28_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

Robert and Moira Queen walked back into ARGUS headquarters to find the place on high alert. With the last few days' events, what would once have passed for high alert hardly made the cut anymore; it was just the constant norm. But the arrival now of a growing and constant number of breachers out of Desert was taking them back to a similar situation from days past, and knowing how that one had turned out and how close they had been to it being much worse… This was the new high alert.

They were told to sit and wait until someone could come and fetch them, so they did the only thing they could do. They sat, and they waited.

Meanwhile, at the heart of headquarters, the quartet formed of Iris West, Cait Snow, Lisa Snart, and Ruby Arias had come to be looked to like something of a nerve center in directing and advising the heroes in the field. With everything happening out there these past few days, no one was batting an eye at the fact that not one of them was an agent, or that one was a breacher herself, or that another was only twelve years old.

Back in the reception area, the Queens remained seated, the press of voices from further in the building reaching them and leaving them to wonder what was happening… and to wonder where their children were in all this.

There came a woman then, the click of her heels sounding like a warning to anyone who would tell her 'no.' The Queens hadn't given much thought to this, until they caught a name being spoken by the woman to the agent who had previously told them to sit and wait. When she'd been told to wait as well, the woman had gone and sat across from the two of them, poised and focused.

"Excuse me," Moira spoke up. The woman looked toward her. "You're here for Iris West, are… are you from Haven as well?" How else could someone here know her?

"I am not from Haven, no, but I am here to speak with Miss West, yes." After a moment of observation, the woman seemed to understand something. " _You_ are from Haven then?"

"Yes," Moira told her, deciding it would be a much simpler answer than the complete one. "Iris came here along with us," she revealed. Either for being made curious or for having some foresight of the long wait they likely had ahead of them, the woman stood and came to sit next to them. She held out her hand and Moira shook it.

"Nora Allen," she introduced herself.

"Moira Queen," Moira reciprocated. "And this is my husband, Robert," she turned to him, as he stretched out his arm to shake the woman's hand.

"What brought you to this Earth?" Nora asked. Again, a loaded question, and, again, Moira set aside the majority of the answer to give only the portion she saw as necessary.

"Our children… Many years ago, an incident left us separated from one another, we… we believed they had died, as they believed the same of us. We were reunited just days ago, just as… everything here was starting and they… They're out there now, doing what they can to help." Nora Allen had listened as Moira told her tale, quickly stunned and captivated.

"They're with ARGUS then?" she asked. Moira hesitated. She didn't know this woman, she couldn't simply tell her 'my son is the Flash, my daughter is Kid Flash' and let their identities be known that way. But then her hesitation seemed to say plenty, as the woman sitting at her side took a breath and gave a knowing nod. "I understand," she said. "My… my son is out there as well. He's not an agent either," she added with a pointed look.

"He's a…" Robert started, unsure what word to use.

"Metahuman," Nora provided, then after a pause. "He doesn't actually know that I know, about his having powers, or the identity he's taken. I suppose… it makes things easier, for the both of us. Only now… I haven't actually seen them recently, he hasn't returned my calls, and I don't know… Well, here we are."

"We've spent twenty years believing our son and daughter were dead, we could almost have forgotten what it felt like, that worry for your children. But then her… Iris… she became, by chance, about as close to family as we could have. Now suddenly our children are back with us and…" And that great worry, all over again. Nora Allen shared a sympathetic smile. How many stories of failings and troubles as parents could the three of them share as they sat here, all waiting on one who couldn't leave her desk or even know that they were there, waiting for her?

X

Oliver and Thea, having dealt with their most recent breachers and hearing of the influx of Desert breachers, were running toward the coordinates they'd been sent when they'd spotted some familiar faces moving in the same direction they were headed. They skidded to a stop just as they'd passed them and turned around to join the quartet.

"Desert?" Oliver guessed, and they nodded. Looking to the four of them there, he could see one of them was missing. "Where's the Green Arrow?" he asked. The four looked to one another.

"She had to sit out for a while," Spartan informed them, which they took to mean as 'and that's all we'll say on the subject.'

"You should go on ahead," Speedy insisted. "You'll get there faster than we could."

"If it's anything like the first day with the War breachers, it might not make much of a difference for us to keep pace with you," Oliver pointed out. So they got to walking. They were only a few minutes away by then.

Hearing the sound of a vehicle, they'd turned and expected maybe an ARGUS transport. Instead, they spied some more familiar faces from inside the van driving toward them.

"Is that where the party's at?" Kendra asked, leaning out the passenger side window with a nod to the cluster of six. "Get in," she pointed to the back. The speedsters and the Arrow-less team looked to one another before walking around to the back of the van, where Samantha held the door open for them. Soon, the packed van was making for the coordinates.

"Did you guys know there were these high and low gravity quarters?" Thea asked. "We had some breachers out of Weighted Quarter," she told them.

"We had a couple out of Nature Quarter," Speedy told her. "Never even heard of it until today. They were a little freaked out by all the concrete and the buildings…"

"We had some kids out of Frozen Quarter making the pool out to be some kind of beach resort," Jim spoke from behind the wheel.

"Right when I thought we'd seen all the kinds of breachers we were going to see," Arsenal frowned to himself.

"It's like we've hit round two," Samantha declared. "We're back to the beginning all of a sudden, All these breachers, from a new batch of quarters, and now… a fixed crossing, again."

"I hate repeats," Thea groaned.

"So they get a relief team, and we're stuck having to keep going?" Oliver tried not to feel annoyed about this, yet there they were. The last time they'd had to deal with such a concentrated number, there had been so many injured, and some deaths… What would 'round two' do to them?

X

The crew from the Waverider had not taken the father and daughters back to Silent Quarter. In the long run, maybe they would take them back there, but after they'd convinced them to leave the theater, sensing maybe this might have been their one chance for it, they had brought the three of them to some fellow breachers, some the Waverider had helped to settle down on Main, to give the girls especially the chance to experience this world they had been so fascinated to discover.

It was hardly the time for it, with the breachers everywhere, but then what other choice did they have? They would be in good hands, and that was what was important. There was a part of them that couldn't entirely ignore the fact that they were introducing these people to something they would lose again the moment they went back home, but then the damage had already done, hadn't it? And maybe they _wouldn't_ go back in the end.

Before they could decide what they would do with them next, the call had come in about the Desert breachers. So they'd left the Silent family with their friends, and they'd gotten back on to the jump ship, sailing toward the coordinates fed to them. They ended up being the first ones to arrive, and to be in the sky, coming down to the scene, to see the breachers below them, spread out around one point where even now another breacher was emerging, it was discouraging… and all too familiar.

"We're going to need another one of those scramblers," Quentin looked on, as they all did.

The jump ship set down at a fair distance, and the five got out, moving forward to get a look at how ground level fared, compared to the aerial view. The breachers had a look to them not unlike those of War had, as they stood there, waiting. These ones weren't from War though. They were out of Desert Quarter. The Waverider had dealt with them before, as they had with any other quarter back on Breach. Each place had its own ways, born out of whatever made a given quarter into whatever set them apart. After a while, they became easy to identify for it.

These ones were clear cut Desert. They had grown in a place intense heat and little green life. The city they'd find in crossing the breach to visit Desert Quarter was as always recognizable for being the same city they were standing in now, but a lot of the structures were different, or they'd been torn down over time. The people, for their part, were as accustomed to their home as any of the others would get to be after a while. But like the others, once they came on to Main, the difference would find the way to catch them by surprise.

It would hardly be a wonder why whoever was behind this – whether it was this Malcolm Merlyn or not – would choose the breachers from War or Desert to be the ones to stand here this way. While some of the other quarters' people would land on this Earth and become overwhelmed, these ones did not. They wore the signs of the weather they lived in, but they stood their ground.

"See anyone we know?" Leonard asked his team, all of them scanning faces, looking for past returnees. For a while none of them spoke, too busy looking.

"There, is that…" Lucy asked, indicating one man near to the center of this extended circle around the point of crossing.

"Of course he'd be there…" Ed shook his head.

"We can't move on them until others get here," Ava was frowning, looking around. As much as their team could handle itself, there were only five of them, and there might have been almost forty breachers out there now.

X

 **HOME OF SARA LANCE**

Laurel Lance had sat by as her little sister slept through the night. She needed it, needed that recovery for body as much as mind. She'd been fighting on through injury, possibly making things worse for herself, for the past two days. And then last night, that entire ordeal with the girl from War… Laurel had dozed off at some point, too, and when she'd awakened to the early morning, Sara still slept, leaned to her and holding on to her like she was the only reason sleep had been able to claim her so completely.

When she'd finally gotten up, carefully prying herself away and resettling her sister on the couch without her, she'd gone and started some coffee brewing, looking into the fridge for breakfast supplies. But her attention had been drawn to the bag left near the door since the night before. She knew what was inside that bag, and she tried to ignore it, but it only worked so long, and then she went and picked it up, opened it. She pulled the hooded jacket from it, unrolled it and felt as though she held a road map to her sister's secret life.

You could hardly see most of the stitched up holes from afar, but up close they were all over the place. So many fights, so many scars. There were larger ones, too, none more than the one down the side, matching the cut still bandaged on her now. And there was the blood, from last night… not her own blood. All she could think was 'she can't have to look at it like that again,' and then she'd moved to the bathroom to do what she could to wash it off. Her wrists complicated matters, but all in all she fared well.

Returning to the kitchen, she'd been startled to find Sara sitting there, a mug nestled in her hands. She looked up, and Laurel could see some of that exhaustion remaining, but also the effects of the full night's rest.

"I was just… I washed your jacket, I hope that's okay."

"Thank you," Sara spoke quietly. Laurel came up toward her, filling her own cup before sitting next to her.

"You're going back out there, aren't you?" Laurel asked, not knowing why she bothered to give it an interrogative inflection. Of course she was going back out there. "Is there anything I can do?" Sara looked up at her. Maybe they were both noticing at once how there was just no hostility left in her voice at all. In the span of that night, it had just left her. Honesty had washed it all away. It could not take away all of the aftermath of Laurel's mother's arrest, but it mended what needed most to be mended.

"They… could probably use having you down at ARGUS," Sara offered. "After how you got out through things yesterday, I'm pretty sure they want to hire you." This made Laurel smirk.

"Long term arrangements will have to wait. But if there's anything I can do now, I will do it," she assured her sister. Sara had only halfway heard. She'd just looked at her phone for the first time.

"How about a breach scrambler?" she asked, handing the phone over even as she moved to get changed. Laurel looked at the screen, finding the report of the Desert breachers' gathering.

"Didn't something like this happen on the first day?" Laurel asked, moving to join her sister. She found her in what used to be _her_ room, just as she pulled a hidden panel open, revealing an array of weapons and other materials. She was gearing up.

"It did," Sara confirmed, her hand absently moving to her bandaged side, inadvertently reminding Laurel this was where she'd been injured.

"Are you sure you're up for this?" She didn't respond, not right away. She kept moving, preparing. Finally she stopped, turned to look at her sister.

"We're being manipulated, all of us. The breachers, too. I can't let anything happen again like what happened to that girl, I… I don't even know her name, but I feel like I should. This needs to stop. And I'm going to help it stop." _I have to… I have to…_ Her sister looked at her, and she seemed to understand this, too. And Laurel was going to help her.

"Tell me about this scrambler?"

Soon, Sara Lance had disappeared beneath the hood and mask of the Green Arrow. When she'd finished, pulling the hood over her head, she'd stopped, catching her reflection for a moment. Laurel had done a good job cleaning the blood away, and Sara wondered if she was really seeing traces of it left or if was all in her head, like the flashes of the girl's face as she died in her arms…

"Sara?" Laurel laid a hand to her arm, snapping her out of her thoughts.

"I have to go," Sara told her. She didn't say 'I'm okay,' because neither would have believed that lie. "I'll let ARGUS know to expect you. Let me know when you're there," she asked, indicating her ear.

"I will," Laurel assured her.

X

 **DESERT BREACHERS' STAND**

Standing well out of the way, past the breachers, past the waiting heroes and just behind the uncloaked jump ship, the scene was being quietly observed. It was all too clear what would happen down there, the moment either side made the slightest hint of a move. Nothing was happening of course, not yet. More breachers were coming through, more of the other side was arriving. 'Heroes,' ARGUS agents, police officers… maybe some plain old citizens unaware that they were about to run toward their deaths for thinking they could take on the Desert breachers.

They weren't going to get involved in this, no. Well, not entirely. All they would take away from here was a captive. It would be more of a challenge, surely, with the amount of people around them, but that was what made it worthwhile. They would be able to say they had achieved their intent, here, right under everyone's noses.

Now all they had to do was decide which one of them would find their way in the company of the reporter, the brother, the alien, and the plastic man…

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	29. DAY 058 (vol 2, ch 29)

_Day 58 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 29_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

Jim Olsen's van sped through the streets, their near emptiness being seen in this moment not as a reminder of what was happening across the city but more as a fortuitous side effect. It enabled him to get them from the site of the stand and back to ARGUS at a much faster pace. No one was going to be stopping him today. The Waverider team had wanted to assist, but Jim insisted they needed to stay where they were. They and their ship could be needed. And this was about his team; he had to take care of it.

All he could hear were Samantha's cries in the back of the van, as Killer Frost did what she could to attend to her. Every time he heard her, he sped up just a bit.

"Absolutely ridiculous, this cold gun," the ice woman was muttering to herself, doing her best to keep Samantha comfortable. She could not simply undo what had been done, but she'd found she was able to keep her just stable enough that at least it did not spread. Samantha was barely aware of this. She'd regained consciousness as they were loading her into the van, and she had not found it in her to pass out again until they could get her some help.

"Kendra… they took her…" she was mumbling, when she wasn't shouting.

"I know they did," Killer Frost focused on her leg. If it had been any more frozen, it might well have shattered when she'd fallen… and _then_ she would have screamed. "They'll find her, someone will find her," she tried to sound encouraging. Right about now, both her fellow passenger and their driver needed to hear it.

Jim was angry at himself. He knew it wasn't his fault, deep down, he really did. But then here he was, their… Well, leader might have been a big word, but when it came down to it, most of the time, they would look to him for leadership, so there it was. Right now two of their own were off on Breach, helping where they could, one was back at ARGUS, doing the same. And two of their team were now missing, kidnaped and held captive, while a third had been injured… and he hadn't been able to stop any of it.

He couldn't have known for Zari, but Kendra, and Samantha… They'd been right behind him, he should have realized they hadn't followed him _before_ Lisa had come shouting in his ear from back in HQ, warning him about what was happening back near the van. By the time he'd gotten back there, him and Killer Frost, it was too late. Kendra was gone, those guys were gone, and Samantha was on the ground, on the edge of consciousness.

The ARGUS agents with the Waverider had come hurrying up soon after, as he was carrying Sam into the back of the van. He had declined a lift, though he had pointed out they might gather some of the blood back there, per Lisa's suggestion. It belonged to one of the breachers, it might help identify him.

"Raymond…" Samantha was speaking, sounding almost delirious. "Other guy… called him… Raymond…"

"She's out again… good for her," Killer Frost reported. Jim sped up.

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

"Lisa, you need to get her out of here for now," Iris muttered to the other woman, and she'd nodded, moving off to find Ruby, who had by chance been off to the bathroom when the entire incident had played out. Now Jim Olsen was a minute out with Samantha, and the last thing they needed was a panicked twelve-year-old crying for her mother.

It was odd to think that the gathering of the Desert breachers had allowed some leeway down at headquarters. So long as they were only standing there, they could do very little to assist. There were still other crossings happening across the city, requiring action and made more complicated by the fact that many people had needed to be rerouted to one location, but it was still less people to direct, so when Samantha Arias was brought in, Iris and Cait were able to hurry to her. There were medics standing by.

"We should get back out there," Killer Frost was telling Jim. Iris and Cait looked at her, at Jim. His face was hard. He knew she was right, especially now that they were two women down, but he also just wanted to sit by and attend his teammate.

"We've got her, Jim," Cait told him. "Go." She nodded. Samantha would be alright. He let out a breath.

"Let me know how she's doing," he requested, and they promised they would. With a reluctant pause, he turned and returned to where his van had been parked, Killer Frost following him. His entire team was gone, but then so was hers.

Iris and Cait had gone to see to Samantha. They had her in a closed room, so they could only see through the windows. If they couldn't undo the damage done to her leg, would they have to take it from her? The thought, all too appropriately, gave them shivers.

"Where's my mom?" they heard from behind them and their breath caught, looking back. Much as Lisa Snart had tried to keep Ruby away, the fact that she'd done it at all was as good as her saying the words 'something happened to your mother' right to her face. Now she was standing there, looking around. When her eyes found her two new friends, she ran toward them. Then she looked through the window. "Mom!" she came up right to the window. Cait put her arms around her, standing behind her.

"They'll take care of her," she vowed, giving the girl's shoulder a rub.

"What happened to her?" Ruby asked, tears in her voice. Iris and Cait shared a look. Truth?

"They told you about those people who took Zari, yeah?" Iris asked. 'And Ronnie,' Cait's face quietly said. Ruby nodded.

"I saw the video. My mom didn't want me to…" Even as she said it, she finally saw the state of her mother's leg. "One of them had a gun that shot fire. The other… is that what his gun does?"

"Yes," Cait confirmed. "They're helping her now, see? They'll take care of her." They stood there for a moment in silence. "We'll stay right here, you and me, okay?" She looked to Iris, who nodded, touching her arm before returning to work. It was the best she could do for the moment. As much as she wanted to be able to keep looking into the situation in Haven, too, she needed to focus on what was happening here now.

So there they stood, Cait, and Ruby, and Lisa Snart, watching as Samantha's leg was tended to.

X

 **DESERT BREACHERS' STAND**

Coming through the city on her own, Sara had done her best to clear her mind. Being by herself, running about, it was almost easier. It took her back to her time in Haven. This wasn't to say that her time in Haven had been easy, not by far. But as time had gone on, as she'd met John Diggle, as he'd started to train her, she had found something like peace in her situation. It had allowed her to become the Green Arrow. It had allowed her to come home.

Right now, she wasn't sure what she was anymore. After confessing her secrets to her sister, after dealing with the War girl's death, it seemed to her now that the entire world had changed before her eyes. She didn't seem to see anything the way she had done before… not even the Desert breachers now guarding another breach.

As she neared the site, she could see them out there. Men and women… some of them younger, boys and girls, really, as young as fifteen, from what she could see… They were here now, yes, and they would make their move sooner or later, they would fight them… but what for? What had convinced them to come here? She didn't know, none of them did really.

The girl, the nameless girl she had called the little general until the blade… She had been sent here, and then, when he'd been about to be sent back, it was like the lights had come on. Sara would never know what she'd had going on in her head in that moment. No one would ever know… but maybe they should have.

"She's back," she caught a familiar voice and turned just in time to see Sin… Speedy… dashing toward her. In no time, the girl had her in a good hug, and Sara could only smile, holding her, too. "We weren't sure if you'd come," Sin told her, then, quieter, "Are you okay?" Sara looked at her, at Michael and Cisco also moving toward her, at Cynthia, who had apparently returned to them.

"How's it looking out there?" she asked them.

"Nothing's moving," Michael reported, giving her a nod of the head which was as good as that hug from Sin. And if he had been able to convince himself she would have accepted it, she believed Cisco would have hugged her as well.

"You didn't miss the previews, our seats are that way," he tipped his head, and they moved to join the ranks standing in wait. As they passed, Sara caught the eye of the Queen speedsters, tipping their heads to her in greeting. She returned the gesture. She got more of it from the crew of the Waverider, a little more from her father, as he moved to find her.

"I'd say something like 'you didn't have to come' or 'you should be resting,' but I think I already know the answers," he grasped her shoulder, and she nodded.

"If it will help, Laurel was with me, and I slept through the night," she informed him, and he smiled.

"It will," he confirmed. "Where is she now?"

"On her way to ARGUS, lending a hand." And there was another weight off Quentin Lance's shoulders, sensing the shift in his daughters' relationship. He worried for them, being off on the Waverider a lot of the time, but then something like this would come along and remind him of the strength of his girls, as though either of them would let him forget.

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

Laurel Lance knew, every day of her life since her mother's arrest, that she didn't have the same image in people's minds as she'd done before, in the period where she'd been groomed to stand at her mother's side. And yet she walked through her life, carrying herself as though she was still the same woman she'd been before, because she was. Today, she walked into ARGUS headquarters and she was Laurel Lance, with the power of L-Corp on her shoulders.

She well expected to be kept waiting, despite her sister's calling her arrival ahead of her. But then she was told that, yes, they were expecting her, but the director wished to speak to her first, and could she please sit here while he was on a call? So she turned to sit, then paused upon seeing a familiar face.

"Nora," she tipped her head with a courteous smile, as one might when running into someone they knew in a business setting. Of course, beneath that, she was genuinely happy – if a bit surprised – to run into Nora Allen. When everything had imploded, following her mother's arrest. Nora Allen had been one of the few who did not automatically villainize her. She had remained a friend, one of the few she had. "What are you doing here?" she asked, moving to offer her hand.

"I could ask you the same," Nora pointed out, shaking her hand. Laurel couldn't help but smile to herself. Up until the day before, she would have had one less reason, still in the dark about her sister's secrets. But she might still have been called upon in the capacity in which she would end up working here, so at least to that she could remain honest.

"There was an attack on my building yesterday. Afterward, I decided to come and offer my services where ARGUS might benefit from them," she explained, her hands moving absently together, fidgeting with the bandages at her wrists. Nora looked and saw this, realizing now.

"That was _your_ building?" She'd heard of it of course, everyone had. And it hadn't escaped her just then how the couple she'd been conversing with had reacted to the mention of the situation from the day before. Nora Allen half suspected their children had been part of the rescue effort. "Forgive me my manners, these days have been unforgivingly hectic. Laurel Lance, I'd like you to meet Moira and Robert Queen," she made the introductions. "Mr. & Mrs. Queen, this is Laurel Lance, a business associate of mine." More handshakes.

"It's terrible what's happening out there, isn't it?" Moira Queen stated after a moment.

"It is," Laurel could only agree. Sometimes she could still feel the press of those cuffs on her wrists, both when they'd been joined and then separated. It would fill her with renewed dread.

"It's a good thing we have people like these agents here… and the heroes," Nora spoke an almost conspiratorial smile, looking to the Queens. Laurel forgot about her cuffs now. She thought of her sister instead, of her father, too.

"Yes," she told Nora Allen, "It really is."

X

"The one with the heat gun, he called the other… the one who shot me… he called him Raymond," Samantha spoke, her voice showing her exhaustion.

The medics had done everything they could for now. They would have to wait and see what happened. It remained uncertain whether or not Samantha would get to keep her leg. She had been told to rest, and she would. But first she'd needed to tell the others what had happened back there. And she needed to see her daughter. When Ruby had been let into the room, her girl had come springing to embrace her, and Samantha had pulled her close, too, kissing the top of her head. Now the three of them were with her, Ruby, Lisa, and Cait. Iris would have been here, too, she knew. But she needed to be out at her post, too.

"We heard," Cait nodded.

"The blood, did you get it?" Samantha asked.

"It's with the Waverider crew. We probably won't get a hold of it until this thing with the Desert breachers is over," Lisa explained. Samantha nodded, understanding. All she could remember now was Kendra, the two of them out there… and those men, the ones who'd taken Zari from them, and Ronnie from Cait. Now they had another of her friends, and she couldn't stand it. And there was something else. She had to tell someone, but…

"Ruby, honey, remember what I told you before? How I would tell you everything I could, and how there would still be some things I wouldn't be able to tell you?" she turned to her daughter, who let out a breath and nodded, getting up from the side of the bed. Lisa had led her away, and the door closed, leaving only Cait there with her. There was curiosity in the other woman's face now. "Something they said back there, I haven't been able to get it out of my head."

"What was it?" Cait asked.

"They knew about Ruby," she revealed, and Cait sat up, surprised.

"Do you think they were there to take you instead?"

"No," Samantha shook her head. "They couldn't have, at least… If I hadn't seen them when I did, I would have followed the others, and I don't think they would have been stupid enough to try and take any one of us in the middle of the rest of us. They could have taken any one of us, I'm sure of it, like I'm sure they couldn't have catalogued details about all our personal lives like that, all of our families. But they knew about me, about my daughter."

"I'm not sure I'm following," Cait admitted, and Samantha took a breath.

"I've never met those guys before today, but _they_ knew about me, which makes me think _they_ know someone who knows me, who knows about Ruby."

"Someone like…" Another breath, a look to the door like she wanted to ensure her daughter wasn't eavesdropping.

"Like my ex… Ruby's father." Cait hesitated. Having Ruby around her a lot these past couple days, they'd spoken about many things here and there. Of her father, the girl had said nothing, except that he had existed, still did, somewhere, but that he wasn't in her life or her mother's, and that 'they had been young' when she'd been born. The way Samantha mentioned him now, the look on her face, it suggested maybe there was more to the story, more than what Ruby herself understood or had been made aware of. Like he wasn't someone Samantha wanted around her child. Cait came to think about something else now, about what Iris had been telling her, about _her_ father, and Tommy's, and those other men they were attempting to identify. There was the one from the sketch, and the tall black one, and…

"Could he answer to the description 'blond and well put together,' your ex?" Cait slowly asked. Samantha didn't say anything, but she didn't have to. It didn't mean this was actually him, but it didn't mean that it wasn't either.

"Where did you hear that?" she asked, already dreading the answer.

"A man, the… the one who's looking for Ronnie, and Zari, and Iris' brother… and Kendra now… He witnessed a meeting between some men we're led to believe are behind some of what's been happening here, these last few days. He wasn't able to identify all of them, including one who was a white man, blond, well put together." Samantha didn't say anything, lying there on the bed for a moment.

"If he saw a picture, would he be able to say for certain?" she finally asked.

"Maybe," Cait could only shrug.

"Let me know how to get one to him, and I'll send it. If Julian's involved, I need to know."

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	30. DAY 060 (vol 2, ch 30)

_Day 60 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 30_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

Iris was working almost on reflex, her mind nowhere near to what she was doing with her hands. All she could think about was beyond this chair, this computer… Wallace, Zari, Mag, Ronnie, and now Kendra… Zari and Mag she had never met, Ronnie and Kendra she'd only met since this whole thing had started, but she felt for them all, wanted to see them returned home safely.

And Wallace… her baby brother… All she could think about was how much she would have to regret if she never got to see him again. Things between them could have been better, needed to be better, and they needed a chance for it to happen, didn't they?

Hearing the lightest squeak of a shoe behind her, something she'd internalized already as 'Ruby approaching,' she'd broken out of thought and out of reflex working and turned her chair around. There was the girl now, with Lisa Snart gently keeping hold of her slumped shoulders as she walked onward.

"Hey, kiddo, come here," Iris reached out her hand, and Ruby marched quietly toward her, leaning into the hug she was offered before standing there, halfway sitting on the desk's edge as Iris kept hold of her hands. "Hanging in there?" she asked, tipping her head to meet her gaze. "How's your mom?"

"She had to talk to Cait, alone," Ruby told her. "She's really hurt, isn't she?" Iris looked back to Lisa, who didn't know what to say, but Iris could sort of guess… Samantha hadn't made Ruby leave because something was wrong, not exactly.

"They're taking care of her, okay? Your mom's been doing a lot to help this city these last few days, and we're not about to forget that. I want you to take a deep breath right now, can you do that?" Ruby looked at her. "Please?" Iris asked, miming a deep breath. After a moment, Ruby did as told. "Good, another?" She did. "One more." A third deep breath. "I know it's hard not to be scared right now, but I think you're a lot braver than you feel right now. You've been doing so much here, and you're _twelve,_ " Iris gave her a smile. "Some of these guys here, they couldn't have done what you did, you know?"

It was stronger than her, and Ruby volunteered a small smile.

"You're part of my team, you, and Lisa, and Cait… When she's able to, I'm sure your mom can join us, too." She could see that spark of encouragement latching on in the girl, brightening her up, but at the same time, there were things holding her back, and she bowed her head.

"They took Kendra…" Ruby spoke, looking up at Iris again, her fear and her sadness seeming to find their way into the smallest of fury now.

"I know," Iris breathed out. "I know you've seen the other videos, but can you promise me you won't watch this one?" she asked her. Before Ruby could answer, there was a tone at the computer, and Iris stalled. She knew what that sound meant… she dreaded the sound of it now, even if she'd set it herself. It was the tone to indicate they were receiving an alert from the Waverider. She could have told herself it had nothing to do with another kidnapping, but she just knew…

"What is it?" Lisa asked, stepping forward even as Iris turned and pulled up the information. She didn't want to be right…

"Another kidnapping," she told them.

"What? When?" Lisa asked. Iris read… _What?_

"War Quarter… Happened almost at the same time as Kendra, back here." She took a brief look toward Ruby before pulling up the video. They watched together, saw the taking of a man named Carter Hall by the three women previously identified as Lily Stein, Jesse Wells, and Lyra Star. "Like _minutes_ apart."

"What does that mean?" Ruby asked.

"I… I don't know," Iris admitted.

"We still think all these guys are working together, don't we?" Lisa asked, and Iris nodded. "You said we couldn't track them through their breaches because there were too many of them at the same time, but, well, if they breached from two places to the same one at roughly the same time, can't we find _that_?" Iris looked at her, blinking, then turned back to the screen.

"Maybe, I…" She turned back to the two of them again, looked to Ruby. "If I tell you what to do, think you can help me again?" she asked. Ruby smiled, nodded. "Team…" she held out her hand in a fist.

"Terrific," Ruby declared, bumping it.

"Team Terrific it is. Have a seat," Iris beamed.

X

 **DESERT BREACHERS' STAND**

This was going to make the War Breachers' stand look like a quiet picnic, they could see it. More agents had joined them, other heroes, but they would still be vastly outnumbered, even if no more breachers came through that guarded opening… and they were still coming. This was going to be a killing field. It couldn't be allowed to pass. Sara looked at all those faces in the distance, and it was all she could think about. She didn't want it to stop after it started, she wanted to stop it while they were all unharmed. All of them. Breachers or not.

"Laurel?" she spoke quietly.

"I'm here," her sister's voice was at her ear, and Sara couldn't begin to explain how much relief it gave her. "I spoke to Director Heywood. Everything's set. If you need me, I'll be here, at ARGUS." There was a pause. "You need something?" she asked.

"Is the scrambler coming along?" Sara asked.

"Working on it as we speak, replicating the one that was used three days ago. All this time at the company these last few years… For all I learned along the way, I never imagined I'd be doing something like this someday," Laurel told her, and Sara could hear a smile in her sister's voice. At the same time, she was trying to think of… something… to defuse the situation. "Sara?" Laurel asked after her sister had been quiet for a while.

"Still here," she promised her, looking to either side of her. Her team, the other teams, heroes, agents… They all had a look about them. Hard determination… apprehensive stress… They were all waiting for the moment, where they would have to run into the fight, knowing full well how it might end up. They weren't looking forward to it any more than she did, though she couldn't speak for where they stood where the breachers were concerned.

She looked at all of them out there, even as another came through and moved to take position somewhere in the circle around the breach. Right then she imagined the other side, off in Desert Quarter. Were they all lined up over there, waiting to cross, too?

"You know, I could probably reverse this thing," Laurel was telling her then, and it took Sara a moment to stop and hear the words.

"You want to make the breach bigger?"

"No, no," Laurel spoke again. "I mean instead of stopping them coming, it could sort of… start them going." Sara straightened up.

"Like… suck them back in?" At her sides, her teammates were looking at her, clearly wondering what she was going on about.

"Not like a vacuum exactly, but yeah. Think of it like a wave washing up and then back again… with a magnet. In this case, open out the breach, then close it up again and everywhere it would touch someone that came from the other side, it'd be like they'd walked back through. They'd be back in Desert Quarter." Sara looked to her team, feeling a breath rise in her like it hadn't for days.

"Can you do that? Really?"

"I… Yes," Laurel told her. "But how are you going to get it close enough to the breach. I saw the feeds, all those breachers guarding it…"

"Two sides to every breach," Sara told her. "How long will it take before it's ready?"

"When do you need it for?"

She didn't know that this would work. And if it didn't, then for better or for worse, they needed all the help they could get out here. So how was she going to pull this off?

"Hold the line," she told Michael. He didn't ask any questions. He just nodded, and she moved off, thinking even as she moved… How was she going to… "Leonard, I need to borrow your jump ship," she told Snart as she approached him and his team. Quentin looked at her. Snart… stared. "And a pilot." He kept staring, then he sighed and turned to look at his people before he addressed his second.

"Agent Sharpe, if you would?"

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

If not for how the man had come to be involved with them, they doubted they could have gotten a hold of John Diggle as quickly as they did. Iris had been the one to deal with him up to now, but Cait was able to get the contact established, and soon she sat there, with Samantha at her side, staring at the tablet screen where they were presented with the face of the one called Deathstroke. He was staring back at them now, and going by the fact that he hadn't hung up, they set to talking.

"Mr. Diggle, my name is Cait Snow, this is Samantha Arias. We're calling from ARGUS headquarters on Main."

"Yes," he replied, and neither woman could say for sure if he was confirming that he knew who they were or that he knew they were at headquarters… possibly both.

"Has Iris informed you about the most recent disappearances?" Cait asked, stealing a glance toward Samantha.

"She has. I've seen the surveillance. How's the leg?" he asked Samantha, who looked down at it now, lying on her bed.

"I wish I knew," she answered. She knew they were trying to sound optimistic, but she could also see they weren't certain whether or not she'd get to hold on to it. "We're hoping to have the names of those two men soon. We have a first name on one of them, and also his blood, but with the situation here, and then in Haven…"

"What's happening in Haven?" John asked, and the women looked to one another, hesitant. "What's happening in Haven?" he repeated, and they couldn't deny his question a second time.

"The attacks on War, there was one in Haven, the police precinct was hit, everyone who was inside…" As unreadable as his face could be, right now there was one thought that just shined right through, unrestrained or maybe just recognizable for some very similar emotions the pair of them had been experiencing recently: overpowering worry.

"Lyla's safe, she wasn't there," Cait told him. The break in his composure now sealed again, he seemed to want to get through this call already.

"Is there anything else?" he asked, and Cait looked to Samantha. Was she sure she wanted to do this? She took a breath, nodded.

"You mentioned previously having witnessed a meeting between Malcolm Merlyn, Joseph West, and three unidentified men?" Cait asked.

"I did," he spoke evenly.

"And Iris sent you the sketch of a man both she and Tommy Merlyn recalled. Was that one of the men you saw?"

"I believe so. I haven't found a name yet." There was a pause; he was understanding something. "Do you have his name?"

"No, but we might have another," Samantha told him. She had her phone in her hands, was just shy of squeezing it too tight. But then she knew she had to get it over with, so she held it in view of the tablet's camera. There was silence, as John Diggle observed the photo. "It's a very old picture, he would be thirteen years older than this, but…"

"I recognize him," Diggle told her, and Samantha's face seemed frozen in this moment of realization. How… how could he? "Who is this man?" Cait touched her arm. Samantha blinked, letting her arm down, looking at the photo, the only one she couldn't seem to let go of, for whatever reason.

"His name is Julian Albert. Once, he was my boyfriend. Then he was my fiancé. Then he was going to be our daughter's father. And then he was gone. I haven't seen him in almost twelve years."

"He lives on the other Earth?" Diggle asked after a moment.

"Yes," Samantha confirmed, her voice just a bit small. "I… I don't know where he lives now. I gave up trying to track him down a long time ago. And really, right now, he doesn't matter anywhere near as much as those six do, the ones they took."

"Have you found anything?" Cait had to ask, thinking of Ronnie… more than she already did at every moment since he'd been taken.

"Do I know where they are? No. But I'm almost certain now they are on your Earth, not mine. If I ever have anything more, you will know." This was as good as saying the call was over, so they thanked him, and the screen went blank. For a while, they sat there in silence.

"How much does Ruby know about her father?" Cait couldn't help but ask.

"Hardly anything," Samantha spoke after a moment. "I couldn't even make myself tell her about the good parts... there _were_ good parts… but then I couldn't have her holding on to those. The way things ended… He left, and the man he was becoming then… I was more afraid of what might happen if he came back… He never did, but I knew… I knew he would never just be gone… He's not here now, but somehow… he is." She looked back to Cait, fear rising in her.

"Ruby's safe, she's here, you're here," Cait reminded her, putting her arm around her shoulders.

X

 **BREACH EARTH, DESERT QUARTER**

Breaking through the breach from Main into Desert, it was hard not to feel the instant press of the temperature outside the jump ship. And, seeing the city below, Sara didn't think twice to pull the jacket over her head, setting it down and pulling off the mask as well. It wasn't as though the woman at her side didn't know who she was under there. She'd been there the day they'd brought her back from Haven to Main.

"The hood would have given us away anyway," Sara told her, tightening her ponytail.

"It would have weighed you down in that weather, too," Agent Sharpe pointed out.

They'd come in cloaked, and knowing the crossing point on Main, it wasn't long that they found the crossing point back here. The sight of it left them just slightly taken aback. There was a small crowd, maybe fifty of them. And then the one at the front of the pack had moved forward… and disappeared. He'd just crossed to Main.

"It'd be so much easier if we could just drop that thing from the air," Agent Sharpe frowned. Sara turned in her seat, looking to the device they'd picked up from ARGUS HQ on their way here. Laurel had made this. They hadn't been able to test it, of course, and they could only hope it would do what it was meant to do. To be on the safe side, her sister had carried right on and set herself to making the scrambler as she'd originally been intended to do, so they could use it as a backup. At the same time, they had dropped off the blood samples of the man who'd shot his cold gun at Samantha Arias.

"Why would we want easy, right?" Sara kept on looking down to the ground, to the breachers in waiting.

"Right," Agent Sharpe with a small laugh. Sara looked at her. "If I can get you close, how long would I have to hold them back before you got that thing working?"

"There are too many of them, there's…" Sara told her, pausing. "If we let them keep crossing for a while, there'll be less of them. It's a risk, but what other choice do we have? There's maybe fifty of them and two of us, and no matter how good we are, they'll go through us in no time, or we'll have to go through _them_ and I…" her voice stalled, remembering the War girl again. Ava looked at her, trapped in those thoughts, and she didn't have to ask where her head was at.

"Alright. We'll set down over there," she indicated a spot, and without waiting for Sara to get a look, she took the jump ship down, landed, and then got up to ditch her jacket and pull her hair up, twisting it into a bun. When Sara got up, she took up the device, nestled in a metal case with a strap she could put over her shoulder, and she moved toward the hatch, waiting for Agent Sharpe to open it.

Ava didn't bring up the fact that she was aiming to go out there without weapons. _She_ had her cosmic staff, and the belt about her waist, but then that was all she needed.

"Ready?" she asked. Sara nodded. They got off the jump ship, the full heat of the Desert Quarter sweeping over their faces before they stepped out and started off to where they could find a place to stand and hide… and watch… and wait, as more of the breachers crossed over to possibly go after their teammates and friends back on Main.

All the while, as they watched and waited, they kept a lookout for anyone who might have been calling the shots. Whoever they were though, in all likelihood they had already left. Whatever was meant to be happening here, they didn't need to get their hands dirty.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	31. DAY 062 (vol 2, ch 31)

_Day 62 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 31_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **SOMEWHERE…**

Kendra Saunders had secrets. She wore them so finely that most anyone wouldn't have known to look through any façade. Only her team knew about her dreams, about the origins of Artemis. Years ago, she'd have this dream, over and over, and in this dream she would see… herself, or a girl who looked a lot like her. She would be running, maybe even hunting, always with the bow and arrow.

It had gotten to the point where she would try and research what it might all mean, and in doing so she would always inevitably cross paths with references to Artemis, goddess of the hunt. It was almost reassuring to have this image as something more substantial than her dreams. One thing had led to another and she'd started to take archery lessons. She was good. She was a natural. And then she took it all in stride and became her own Artemis. Now here she was.

But there was something else under this, something more than a young girl dreaming of the hunt. The dreams felt so real, as real as though she'd lived them, memories… But it was impossible, she knew it. Still the dreams persisted. She still had them, sometimes, as though the hunter in her mind lived on in the world of her dreams, going on adventures for the span of her slumbering.

She'd dreamed of her again, before she'd awakened in this strange room, surrounded by friends and strangers. Captive. Zari and the others, the other three who'd been here with her before Kendra and the man from War had arrived, were talking amongst themselves like they were trying to decide what to do about their two new roomies. Kendra still sat on the ground, nursing a nasty bump at the back of her head from where she'd been knocked out. Combined with her injuries from the first day, she was not feeling anywhere near top shape.

"This place is very strange." She looked back, finding the new one, Carter, pacing near the wall behind them. He looked about as rattled as she did right now, and she felt just a bit uneasy at finding reassurance in this. She wasn't the only one who was messed up. Making up her mind, she made to stand up, which turned out to be the tiniest bit foolish, going by the way she didn't quite find her footing on her own. _He_ had caught her, set her steady, quickly releasing her as soon as she was.

"Thanks," Kendra told him, gaze evading as she took a few careful steps. She laid her hand to the wall, briefly felt at it, unsure what she was hoping to find. "So why did she call you Ragman?" she asked, turning around. She was still getting used to the fact that they somehow shared a friend. He looked around, hesitant. "Sorry, I…"

"The area where I was grew up was quarantined before I was born. There had been… a great sickness. Some said it was the enemy's doing, to show his power. The way I heard it for years, when the attack came, the Call to Shelter lasted for a month. I've lived through my share of Calls, and they've never lasted more than three days at the most and those have been… hell. But for a month, no one dared to wander. A lot of people ran out of food, of… anything. A lot of bad things happened, most people who survived it won't even talk about it for how bad it was.

"The sickness spread, and anyone found to have it would be sent there. People would believe that anyone sent there was just killed, but they weren't… which was almost worse. They just died slowly. My mother… my mother got the sickness, when she didn't know yet that she was expecting me. I've never known the whole story, but somewhere the coat came along, made of those old rags, pieced together. Somehow… they protected her, protected me. I was born, and she would carry me hidden in the coat with her. She wasn't sick like the others because of it, so she would help where she could. The infected looked to her like some… angel…"

He paused. He looked almost uncomfortable, not feeling the coat over him.

"I grew up, and still she kept me, gripping to her always. It could only work for so long. I got too big. One morning, I woke up, swimming in that coat on my own, my mother holding on to me but out of the protection of the rags. I wanted her to come back, to take it back, but she wouldn't. She wanted me to have it, to be safe. She died a week later. After that, I spent a few years trying to keep doing what she was doing. The sickness had stopped spreading. There were no more new people brought, and eventually… they were all dead. Except me. The day they came to burn the place, I escaped."

Kendra didn't know what to say to all that, and maybe he figured as much, because he nodded to the four of them out there.

"I don't know how I didn't recognize her before," he said, which Kendra took to mean Zari. "I saw that video, from when she was taken, but… I didn't know it was her." He turned to look at her, like maybe he wondered how much he was able to say. How much had Zari shared of her past with her new friends? That might have been the moment where Kendra got to feel like the guy wasn't a stranger to her anymore.

"She told me before how it was just her brother and her in the end. And after he died… that's when she left Breach Earth." Carter nodded.

The others had come from the corner now, whatever they'd needed to discuss now done. Kendra watched the one called Mag stop in the middle of the room for a moment before giving the others a nod, and there was a noticeable release in the others' stance, like they'd been given the all clear.

"We're alone now," Mag told Kendra and Carter.

"We are?" Kendra asked.

"That wall there, they can watch us from the other side, but they're gone now," Ronnie explained, pointing to the wall.

"How do you know that?" Carter asked.

"She can sense it," Wallace revealed, indicating Mag. "Or smell it, or… Well, they're gone, the girls, the guys, the mystery man…" Before either of them could ask 'Mystery Man?' Zari had explained.

"There's some other man out there, mostly. We don't know too much about him… He comes and goes though, and right now he's gone."

"So no one's watching," Kendra understood. "Can we get out of here?"

"We've been working on figuring out a way, but it's been… slow going," Ronnie frowned.

"Can't you do something with your powers?"

"Not in here, no," Ronnie shook his head and pointed to a spot on the ceiling. "Dampener. I'm just a normal human in here, no meta."

"Well, I'm not human at all, so should I try it?" Mag asked, turning to Zari, who gave a nod. "Okay, back up," she motioned to the others, walking toward the viewing wall, stretching out her arms, flexing her wrists and hands. As the others watched captivatedly, she braced into a stance and threw a punch into the wall.

It was possibly the first true display they got of her strength and stamina that she gave not the slightest sign of pain or discomfort after hitting at full force. All she did was let her arm down and lean in to inspect her point of impact.

"Well?" Zari slowly asked. Mag touched the wall, frowned. After giving off a curious hum, she moved her hand along the wall for a time before stopping at one of the glass like strips, barely noticeable. She repeated her winding up gave another hit. Again, there didn't appear to be too much of an effect, in the hitter or the hit, but somehow Mag looked satisfied.

"It won't be enough, but it's a start," she declared, turning back to the others, all of them looking at her like they weren't sure what was happening. "I think if I hit it enough, it might disrupt the system, their mirror acts." Wallace looked at her as though to say 'well do it.' "And then what?" she laughed.

"We could really do with getting that dampener down, too," Ronnie agreed, looking to the ceiling. "We have a couple more bodies, our ladder might have a shot this time."

"How long is your mystery man usually gone?" Carter asked.

"Not that long. We might have to wait until the next time he goes away," Mag told him.

If they were ever going to make this work, it wouldn't happen now, and understanding that, they could only feel a bit down. One by one they came back to sit on the ground. They weren't abandoning the fact that they were not under surveillance at the moment – in theory – and so the four who'd been there before them went about telling Carter and Kendra about what had been happening in the room, what they had discovered, what they had seen and heard. Of particular interest, though they might have spent more time discussing escape attempts, was the fight with the meta girls and the gun guys.

"Look at you, Zari Tomaz, mild-mannered reporter," Kendra's smirk was all pride and no surprise. "She's taught me a thing or two this one," she went on to say, addressing the others.

"Power of the press," Zari tipped her head.

"Now I wish I'd been here for that, which… would be about the only reason to _want_ to be here," Ronnie frowned, absently fidgeting with his wedding ring, thinking of his wife. "Saw how you handled yourself in that video though. That was good."

"They know about all of us out there then," Wallace stated.

"They do," Kendra nodded. "There's a guy out there that's supposed to be looking for you… us…" she corrected herself, reminded that she was part of this group now.

"Who?" Mag asked.

"His name's John Diggle, he's…"

"John Diggle?" Wallace sat up at this. They turned to him. "I've seen him before, he… he's worked with my dad before." There was silence in the room.

"That's good, isn't it?" Carter asked, clueless.

"Not really, no," Ronnie's shoulders sank. "Any chance he's on our side this time?"

"Deathstroke?" Wallace looked back at him, letting out a breath. He tried to think back to the last time he'd heard of the guy, and all he could really recall was that his father had vowed that he'd kill him if he ever saw him again. "I… I'm not sure," he admitted. "But if he does find out, we should be on our guard."

"If he gets us out of here, we can worry about the rest after. But just for shakes, let's get ourselves out of here first, yeah?" Kendra offered, and it was a collective agreement on that.

"He's back…" Mag mumbled under her breath all of a sudden, and to the others' credit they played it cool enough… until they saw the alien woman's back straighten. "New people…" she added. "With him, there are others."

"What can you sense?" Zari asked, but Mag held up her hand, low and out of view. Wait. Kendra picked up the deck of cards at that, started shuffling and asked the others if they wanted to play. As she dealt the cards, Mag sat there, her back to the viewing wall, trying to make sense of what she got.

"Man… Main," she started to list out, just as quiet. "Man… Haven. Man… War. Man…" She frowned, head tipping. "… Alien, but Haven… Main?" Zari clasped her hand. Don't give yourself away, it seemed to say. "There are five of them back there, all men, our one and four others, and…" She hesitated. As impulsive as she could sometimes be, she knew better than to incite it in others. She shook her head. It was all she could give them.

As distracted as they all were, they couldn't show it, and so they played cards. The five men remained back there for almost twenty minutes, and then, picking a card, Mag stopped and took a breath before reporting to the others that the four new unknowns had left. It was just their mystery man now.

"Who do you think it was?" Kendra asked.

"Either more lackeys or… associates," Zari offered.

"Has to be associates. We've been dealing with him and the girls and the guys for… however long we've been in here," Wallace pointed out.

"Four days," Kendra provided.

"It's the first time anyone new has shown up here." That much they could see as probable. Mag was still quiet, and when she looked up again it was because she knew she owed this much.

"The man from Haven…" she started. "He was…" she searched for the right word, "… familiar."

"You knew him?" Ronnie asked.

"No, not familiar like that," Mag shook her head. "Familiar… like family… Not mine." At this, her eyes had found Wallace. He stared at her for several seconds before looking to the viewing wall. "I'm sorry," she told him, as the others received this revelation with the weight it looked to press on the young man, the first of them to be taken, who'd been in here the longest.

He had always suspected deep down that his father was behind this somehow, but maybe another part of him had hoped deeply that he would be wrong, that his father couldn't possibly put him through this. But now he knew… His father had known. His father had been back there just a few minutes ago, had looked upon his son in captivity and done nothing, just watched… then walked away. Now that he knew for sure, he felt a lot of things and none of them were of acceptance.

Of all the reasons why he might have been taken – and there really weren't that many – it all became that much clearer now. On the one hand, it was deniability. Surely he could not be involved, he would say, if they caught him, not when his own son had been a victim. And on the other hand… His father had done his part over time, wanting to recruit him. Wallace wasn't blind to it, but he also never accepted him.

He had been compelled more than once though, and for that he had frequented his father… his friends… He was a liability. He knew who those other men had to be.

"Mystery man is called Vandal Savage," he declared now, not even whispering, because what was the point? "He's from Future Quarter."

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

Attempting to find the location of the kidnapped six through the double breaching was proving to be harder than expected. It wasn't as though they were lacking in breach activity… it was all over the place. Even after Cait had returned from being with Samantha and had told them John Diggle believed they were being held here on Main ( _Why had they been talking to Deathstroke?_ Iris would think.) this only made it harder. The vast, _vast_ majority of the crossings had their destination on Main, in this city. Maybe that was the whole point.

They weren't giving up. If they had to comb through hundreds of them, they would comb and comb. Ruby and Lisa were on that, now that Iris had showed them what to do, and they had plenty of stakes in this; they wouldn't stop.

Then there was the blood.

It had been delivered to headquarters by the Green Arrow and Agent Sharpe before they made for the breach. The blood of the cold gun man named Raymond. If they could identify him, identify his partner, maybe… maybe…

Cait had taken it upon herself to run the sample, while Iris was manning her maps and Ruby and Lisa were looking for breaches. They'd all been so caught up in all of this that, when Cait came back toward them, they hadn't realized the time had gone by. But then there she was, pressing a hand to Iris' shoulder and leaning to speak at her ear.

"I need to talk to you," she whispered. Iris had just barely startled before looking up at her. The look on the grounded speedster's face was just on this side of disconcerting. At the station where they sat, Ruby and Lisa were looking at them, too. Iris gave the two of them a smile before following Cait, ending up in the small room which had become her space for the past few days.

"What is it?" Iris asked. Cait hesitated, looking down to her screen. "That bad?"

"I have their names," she revealed.

"What? That's great, it's… it _is_ great, yeah?" Iris blinked, trying to read the look on the other woman's face. Cait sighed, showing her screen, a mug shot of a familiar face. It was the cold gun man.

"Raymond Palmer," she told Iris. "Previously incarcerated, though he's been implicated in a few things since his release. From what I've read, it sounds like he might have been the one to build those guns, he has the smarts for it."

"And he chose to use those smarts to do _that_ to people," Iris sighed. "Okay, so I'm not seeing what's got your face all in knots so far."

"You will," Cait absently felt at her forehead like she expected an actual knot. "Once I was able to identify him, finding known associates was a breeze. One name jumped out in particular." One swipe to her phone screen brought up a second mug shot, another familiar face.

"Heat gun guy," Iris pointed at it. Cait nodded. "And?"

"His name is Nathaniel Heywood." The name made Iris look up at once, and Cait nodded again.

"As in Director Heywood?" Iris lowered her voice.

"I don't know," Cait lowered her voice, too. "I'm sure it's perfectly normal for strangers to have the same surname, but it's not that common, and in this whole circle, what are the odds? I didn't go digging, didn't think it would be appropriate, but… it's going to get out sooner or later, and what's it going to do to all this? The way I see it, everything that's been happening has been meant to keep us busy, distracted, and whoever's orchestrated this brought all of us into this situation, including those girls and these two. Maybe it's not random that they involved this Heywood guy if it could throw a wrench into ARGUS."

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	32. DAY 064 (vol 2, ch 32)

_Day 64 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 32_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **HOME OF JULIAN ALBERT**

John Diggle looked at the house from where he sat, across the street. The woman back at ARGUS at told him how she hadn't seen him since their daughter was a baby. Going by how easy it had been for him to track down the man's current address and the home it was attached to, she must not have looked very hard for him… if she'd looked for him at all. But then if he had thrown in with Merlyn and West, he could see why she wouldn't want him near her daughter.

He had never met this man, the only time he'd seen him being the meeting he had spied on. For having previously associated himself with Joseph West and his lot, he couldn't imagine this Albert guy had been in the group's acquaintance for very long. Then again, the quick background check he'd run on him didn't reveal anything that would suggest previous criminal activity. The best he'd been able to find had been prevalence for magical artefacts.

Maybe a deeper search would fill in the picture better, but for now his only reason for being here was to see if Julian Albert had gone to ground, like Merlyn, like West, or if he was still out and about.

Getting into the house had been easy. Walking quietly through the place, observing his surroundings, he found nothing too out of the ordinary. The home was just the kind you'd expect someone of comfortable means to have, very clean… It was the kind of home someone lived in, sure, but also someone who didn't make much use of it. It suggested to John maybe the home of someone who travelled a lot, was away from home most of the time.

He found a stack of envelopes, mail, neatly placed on a table. There would be a maid looking after the place while he was away, of course. Going by the stack he found, John could guess Mr. Albert hadn't been home in nearly three weeks. This could have been for his joining Merlyn and West, like it could have been another travel.

As he kept going, he had mostly given up the likelihood of some personal touch, something beyond the mail addressed to Julian Albert which would indicate he actually lived here. Then he went upstairs, and he found the man's bedroom. There was a fireplace across the vast room, and sitting on the mantle were a series of picture frames. There were maybe a dozen of them, each showing one child, one girl, seemingly chronicling every year of her life, from infancy to pre-adolescence. He didn't even need to ask himself. He just took a picture of the collected frames.

Continuing along his search of the second floor, he found some locked doors – he didn't bother opening them – and a bathroom, and then the only other unlocked door. Opening it, he found what looked to be a room for a child, a girl. It didn't look lived in, but it had been tended to, no doubt.

Leaving the house as undisturbed as though he'd never been there, John Diggle couldn't say for sure that Julian Albert had gone to ground or not, but for all that was happening now… he could believe it. He also believed Samantha Arias deserved to know her daughter might be in trouble.

X

 **DESERT BREACHERS' STAND**

There were too many of them. They kept coming, and even though their own numbers had also increased, they'd stopped increasing. Everyone that could come had come, and the others were holding the rest of the city while this was happening. If _they_ came, too, they might have a more even fight, but it wouldn't stop the other breachers, out there, and it wouldn't stop _them_ from causing other problems, hurting other people. No more people would join them, but the breachers' numbers were still increasing.

"Whatever she's planning out there, it needs to work…" Sin breathed, looking to the mass of breachers.

"It will," a confident voice spoke at her ear, one Sin didn't know. She started, touching a finger to her ear.

"Who's there, what…"

"This is Laurel Lance, back at ARGUS," the voice told her, and Sin relaxed just a bit.

"Oh… the sister…"

"Yes, the sister. And you're the sidekick?"

"Hey, we don't use that word," Sin protested. "We're partners. I help, she trains… Which might be the basic definition of… that… but you can just call me Speedy."

"Alright, then, Speedy. Did she explain to you all what will happen when the device is activated?"

"In a nutshell, yeah. It won't hurt the rest of us, will it?"

"If you're not from Desert Quarter, then no, it won't even notice you're there. The one possibility for you to get pulled through would be if you're in contact with one of them when the wave hits, but we won't know that for sure until it happens."

"Great… that's great," Sin tried to sound encouraged, looking at the breachers. They hadn't moved, but it was getting to look more and more like it had to happen soon. "Hey, just so you know, she talks about you all the time." There was a pause.

"She does?"

"Absolutely. The way I see it, every hero has something that drives them, something that made them even want to be a hero in the first place. We look after the city, all of that, sure. But that wasn't what made her become the Arrow. That was you. She hated lying to you." Another pause.

"I know," Laurel told her.

"Don't tell her I told you all that, okay?" Sin added, and she thought she heard a laugh.

"Got it."

X

 **BREACH EARTH, DESERT QUARTER**

Sara could feel already she would return from this place less with a tan and more with a vast sunburn. She wasn't thinking about that though… not too much. They had a defense to mount up.

On Seeker's advice, Sara and Agent Sharpe – Ava, she had insisted that Sara could call her Ava – had left the market square and gone in search of backup. They'd been told that the rest of the city didn't approve of what was happening back there, that they would help if they were asked. Now they needed to see if this proved to be true.

The gathering in the square had forced away those who might have been out there now. Merchants, and shoppers… They had somehow come to reconvene and carry on their business further out, in another open space.

"See anyone you know?" Sara asked. Ava, being part of the Waverider's team, would have travelled to this quarter, like many more quarters, too. With some much needed luck, they might find some local connections to get things moving.

"No, but there are some people we should try and find," Ava told her, catching on to her idea. "This way, we need to hurry."

Diverting away from the makeshift market, Ava had led her toward a more residential area. The homes were still to some extent as they would be back on Main, though at the same time modified or worn in some way, as consequence of how these people had to live, with the conditions they were in. It left Sara to consider something which had been one of those questions she kept asking herself, stuck in Haven, once she'd understood it was another place.

"Do you ever ask yourself about all these quarters?" she asked Ava as they walked.

"How so?" Ava asked.

"It's the same city, same structures… mostly… but then how is that? How could the same buildings exist in most quarters? Even here, even if they're rundown now… They existed. It's like they all had the same template." Ava smirked. "What?"

"Oh, it's just that we tend to have that conversation a lot, up in the Waverider. If you could see them, all those versions of the same city… Sure, there's variations, going from one to the next, but it's like you said, underneath, they're the same. Just for fun, ask your father, just be prepared for him to go on and on about it." Sara smiled now, too.

"So what's the leading theory?" Ava hesitated to respond. "It's alright, just tell me."

"Well… Some of us think that it wasn't always like this." Sara frowned, confused. "Ask anyone, and they'll be dead set on the fact that they've always lived in their quarters, that it goes back generations and generations. But the way we've been looking at it, some think that it used to be there was just the one Earth, and then… then something happened, and it broke the Earth in two, and one of them over and over again." Sara felt the slightest chill at the thought of it.

"What could even do that?" she asked, and Ava shrugged.

"Not a clue. That's why it's just a theory and nothing else." They walked in silence for a minute after that. "Seems so strange to think now, with all the crossings we've made over the years, there had to be times where the team was in Haven, when you were still missing, and we had no idea." Sara didn't reply, but then she had a feeling she didn't have to. This wasn't Ava sharing a realization, a thought. This was Ava sharing an unspoken fact, something she'd understood long ago. "How long did you know about the Waverider before you approached us and we took you back to Main?"

"About a year," Sara told her, and that was that. She wouldn't ask why, and without saying it, Sara knew it would stay between the two of them, unless she chose to say something, especially to her father.

"Right here," Ava nodded to a small house.

Inside, Sara was introduced to a woman and her three grown sons and daughter. She didn't even need explanation as to how they'd come to be familiar with the Waverider team, although she did hear it. The ship had come by some damage leaving War one time, and they'd made a controlled crash into Desert Quarter. The woman and her family had tended to the team and been allies ever since. When Ava introduced her as Quentin's daughter, they had greeted Sara with warmth and familiarity.

More important to the present situation, she could just feel how these were the kind of people that other people would listen to. And they needed that.

They were aware of some situation down at Market Square, of course, though they hadn't known the whole of it. Now that they did, they were that much more furious. And they wanted to help. Ava and Sara had explained their plan, explained what needed to be done and what they needed them to do.

"Go back to the square, keep an eye. We will meet you there," the old woman told the two of them, and then they were off, making their way to the square.

As they approached, there was a part of them that dreaded what they would find once they arrived. The worst would have been to find all the breachers had gone, which would likely mean that they had engaged the other side in a fight and they were too late.

There were still some breachers, fourteen of them as counted.

"How many do you think you can subdue?" Sara asked.

"On my own?" Ava asked back, appraising from where they stood. "Maybe half? But we have to think this through. They're going to notice, back on Main. They've been churning them out like clockwork, and once the clock jams, they'll know something is happening on this side. They might just go ahead and start attacking."

"You're right," Sara frowned to herself. It was becoming harder to wait it out, knowing her friends were back there, thinking about… the War girl… the blood… She looked down to her hands for a moment, feeling them trembling.

"Hey…" Ava looked over, seeing this and reaching over, taking hold of her hand with her own. "What's wrong?" Sara shook her head, unable to speak. She held Ava's hand though, and she breathed. "Are you going to be able to do this?" This wasn't the time for blind encouragement anymore. They needed to be frank with one another, there was just too much at stake. "Sara… are you with me here?"

"I'm here, I…" she took another breath. "The girl, I still see her," she admitted.

"Okay…" Ava understood now. She could have told her more than one story here, told her about things she had seen, things the whole team had seen, Quentin himself. Later, maybe she would, but for now they had to know, one way or the other, what would happen, if Sara would be able to do her part in putting a stop to this situation with the Desert breachers.

"I'm here," Sara repeated, finally turning her head to look at her. Her resolve had been shaken, but it was finding its footing again. It was all Ava needed to see. After a moment, their hands released. They shared a brief smile, encouragement meeting gratitude, and they looked to the square. "Twelve of them now," Sara counted.

It was just as one more crossed down in the square that, coming up from deeper in the city, arrived the old woman and her daughter, and what looked like easily forty to fifty men and women. Sara and Ava looked to one another before moving to meet them.

"My boys are leading the other half to the other side, waiting for your signal," the woman told them, holding out a small radio. Ava took it from her, then placed it in Sara's hand with a nod.

"Your call."

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

They hadn't told anyone yet, hadn't even sent the information on the Waverider team, or to Diggle. They needed to speak with the director first, and with the Desert breachers' stand happening, it felt like the worst possible time… and they still had to do it.

Both Cait and Iris had waited outside the director's office until he would admit them. Once he did, he told them to 'make it quick.' They hesitated at this, but they sat down across from him and Iris looked to Cait. Did she want her to jump in or would she say it?

"Sir… Director Heywood… Have you seen this man before?" Cait slid a print out of the heat gun man's mug shot across the director's desk. Henry Heywood picked up the image, even as his eyes had been locked on the face it showed. "There have been six kidnappings over the past four days. Two in War and one in Haven where the kidnappers were identified as Lily Stein, Jesse Wells, and Lyra Star. The other three took place here on Main, by two men we only just managed to identify, both of them Haven natives. The first was identified as a Raymond Palmer, and the second, the man in the photo…"

"Nathaniel…" the director spoke evenly. Cait and Iris shared another look. He turned his eyes up to look at them. "Who else knows about this?"

"Just us," Iris swore.

"We thought we should talk to you first, before passing it on to the people looking for the ones who were taken… including my husband, and her brother," she indicated Iris.

The director looked to the two of them for a few beats more. He reached to the bottom drawer of his desk. There were a few beeps, the drawer opened. A few more beeps, some kind of compartment opened, and he pulled out a box, laying it on the desk. He opened the box, and pulled out a photo, set it down and pushed it toward them. Iris picked it up, looked at it, Cait leaning over to see, too. The image showed the director, looking… mostly the same. Next to him was another man, slightly younger but similar looking, with a small boy of no more than two perched on his shoulders.

"I was born in Slow Quarter," he declared. "I had a wife, a son… That's him there, next to me," he pointed to the photo. "Hank. _He_ got married, and they had a son… Nathaniel." They stared at the photo again, stared at the small boy, really stared. They looked to the mug shot, next to it, then back to the boy. They could almost see it, but… but…

"But…" Iris actually said it then, followed by an awkward smile. The director nodded before carrying on.

"My son, he developed an ability, he's what you would call a breach hopper. Now, this was before ARGUS came, set its outpost, there was no way to know we were 'slow.' It was while exploring these other quarters that he met the woman who would be his wife. He decided to stay with her, and I couldn't very well stop him. When ARGUS came, I joined them, worked my way up. I had barely seen my son, who grew… outgrew me. And my grandson…" he bowed his head.

"Does… does he know who…" Cait slowly asked.

"He's only ever seen me once, and that was… that picture there," he indicated the photo still in Iris' hand. "I don't know what his parents told him, but we all decided it would be best if I stayed away, so not to confuse him."

To Iris, one thing started to make sense right then. They'd been wondering why those two… Raymond and Nathaniel… had been taking people here, always, while the girls stuck to Breach Earth. But if bringing the two of them into this scheme had this purpose – to cause trouble in ARGUS through the director – what better way than to bring in his secret grandson to do just that?

"We'll be discreet," Iris told him. "Until you decide how to… how to handle…"

The director's phone rang and he picked it up at once.

"Heywood," he spoke, listened, then breathed out. "On my way." He hung up and looked to the two women sitting across from him. "Get out there now. The Desert breachers are moving forward."

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	33. DAY 066 (vol 2, ch 33)

_Day 66 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 33_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **DESERT BREACHERS' STAND**

Standing alongside new friends and old acquaintances, alongside agents and officers, all of them waiting for the same hammer to drop, the tension was enough to make any of them feel like any second could be the one where everything went to hell. Oliver and Thea Queen, of course, had something else on their side in this department. When the world slowed down around them, they could just see the shifts coming, the slightest change that would tell them… Pay attention, something is coming. And they had seen it now, with the Desert breachers.

"This is it!" Oliver shouted, and all around him they had started to brace for it. Wild Dog and Killer Frost… Snart, and Black Canary, and Obsidian and Hourman… Spartan, Speedy, Vibe, and the woman from the League of Assassins… Kid Flash at his side… There should have been more of them here, but they were missing, or injured, or forced to sit out, or they were across the breach, hopefully doing something that would put an end to the bloodshed before it could begin.

But it _was_ about to start, they could see it plainly, and all they could do now was to try and be smart about it, to afford the Green Arrow and Stargirl to do what they needed to do.

There was a moment of stillness, like a rollercoaster reaching the peak of its climb… and then it would rush into the fall… and the Desert breachers did the same, not rushing into a fall but into a run. The forces hoping to stop them were dispersed, meaning to encircle them as best as they could so that, wherever they ran, someone would be there to try and stop them… and try not to get trampled in the process.

"Ready?" Oliver turned to his sister. Thea gave him a smirk, and then they started to run, round and round in opposite circles, around the breachers. If they could contain them long enough, maybe it would be enough…

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

Returning to their main hub in headquarters, Iris and Cait couldn't help but feel the dread. It wasn't loud, as they might have expected the situation to call for. No… It was quiet. People were maintaining whatever they were meant to be doing on other fronts, too, but for the most part they would be watching what was happening at the stand, now less of a stand and more of a run. The breachers had started to move.

"Ruby, honey, you should go and be with your mom right now," Cait had told the girl as she and Iris came to find her standing there, looking up at the screens like the rest of them. She looked back to the two of them, like part of her just wanted to stay here, to see what would happen, but by now she just knew there were moments where she had to stop and do as she was told. So she went along with Lisa to see her mother, out where she was recuperating.

"Have they activated it yet?" a woman came to join them, and they turned to her. They knew her now, of course… She'd been all over the news. "Laurel Lance," she introduced herself officially.

"Iris West."

"Cait Snow. You made that device they took to Desert."

"I did," Laurel confirmed. "Now I just need to see that it works…" So they watched, observing the speedsters as they ran up, barricading the breachers with their movements. "It won't hold," Laurel declared what they were all thinking.

X

 **BREACH EARTH, DESERT QUARTER**

"Wait, look…" the old woman's daughter pointed something out. Sara and Ava looked, just as the others did, and they saw what she'd seen.

By the time everyone was set, it seemed the only way they were going to make it work would be to let the last of them cross before getting the device set and activated, even if it meant whatever would happen back on Main would start to happen. But then just as their moment came, they looked and they saw… there were others. They'd been standing out of sight this entire time, and now that the last crossers had gone, it appeared these ones were coming forward, not to cross but to stand in guard.

"They knew we'd try to take the fight to this side," Sara declared, tension rising in her. These ones would definitely fight to keep them away.

"We have to get down there now," Ava looked at her. Sara turned back to her, meeting her gaze, knowing what she was trying to say, to ask. She nodded, and Ava turned to the old woman, her radio in her hands, and the people gathered behind them. "The two of us will see to the device."

"Do what you have to do," the woman's daughter told her. "We will handle our people."

"Thank you," Sara told them as she stood, ensuring that the box slung around her shoulder was secure before Stargirl took hold of her good side and took them into flight. They were headed into the market square.

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

 **DESERT BREACHERS' STAND**

The way the breachers had been amassing around their crossing point all this time, there had been no way of knowing that there was anything in any way organized about it, except to surround the crossing. It was only as they made their move that they discovered there _had_ been some strategy in the positioning. They had metas among them, specifically in the outer ring.

The two speedsters were the first to experience this discovery. It was one thing that they ran as fast as they did, but an obstacle was an obstacle, and while they had ways of getting past those obstacles in one way or another, sometimes there would just be no way for them to evade those obstacles. Thea was the one to be brought to an abrupt stop, though not in the way she had when they had come across that Future barrier around Laurel Lance's building, when she was hit with… some strange energy she could not explain… All she did know was that all of a sudden it felt like she was running in slow motion, trying to force her way through something unwaveringly solid. And then someone got hold of her, holding her firmly in place. She couldn't move.

Oliver hadn't been able to stop it, focused on holding back the breachers, but the moment he saw what was happening he skidded to a stop in front of the one holding his sister. There was no waiting after that. The breachers started to move again.

"Let her go!" Oliver commanded of the breacher.

"I've got this, Flash," Thea insisted through gritted teeth. "Stop them." He stared at her. "Go!"

X

 **BREACH EARTH, DESERT QUARTER**

Sara Lance was not in the habit of flying, at least not by means of someone's abilities or… cosmic objects… If not for all that was at stake in that moment, she might have gotten herself caught up in the experience of it, but instead she just kept hold of the one they called Stargirl and let herself be flown up and into market square. When they hit the ground, Ava immediately had to release her and swing into action as some of the surprise guards saw them and turned to attack. Sara, for her part, briefly reached to her injured side, the landing having sent twinges of pain.

The old woman and the people she had helped gather had quickly moved in to deal with the guards, and it was hard to know how it would all go, hard to know sometimes what side they fought on. Sara looked at them, looked at Ava defending their position. She knew what her task was right then, but then there was that rattle in her head, the instinct to jump in and join the fight, but also the memory of the War girl making her see the entire situation under that new light…

She opened the case on the ground before her. This. This was the answer. If this worked, and she had enough faith in her sister to know that it would, then she could prevent the damage she wanted to prevent. They would still have to deal with all the breachers being brought back from Main, but if they moved fast… they could do this. So she got to work.

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

Samantha had been lying quietly on her bed since first talking with John Diggle. She laid there, thinking about her daughter, and about her daughter's father… Some days it all felt like so long ago that Julian had come into her life, and they had been in such a good place, so long ago that she'd been pregnant and it felt like their life together was really starting. And then… then it had all gone to…

"Mom…" She looked up, and there were Ruby and Lisa. Samantha smiled, gesturing for her daughter to come and join her, that she might grasp her hand, pull her near. She may have been told to rest, but having her girl close was maybe the best she could ask for. "It's happening, the big fight."

"It is?" Samantha sat up, looking to Lisa. "Jim and…"

"They went back," Lisa told her.

"I need to see," Samantha tried to move at once, and her leg gave a firm protest, making her cry out and reach for it. Lisa and Ruby moved at once to help her. "Please," she told Lisa.

They found her a wheelchair. Getting her down into that chair was not the easiest thing, but they managed it, and then Lisa wheeled her back toward the hub, with Ruby walking alongside the chair, holding her mother's hand.

"Iris, Cait…" Samantha called out, and they looked up, surprised but happy to see her. "What's going on out there?" The two women looked to each other. There was another by their side, and Samantha soon recognized her as Laurel Lance.

"The Flash and Kid Flash tried to hold them back, but it didn't last," Iris reported. "We're waiting for the Green Arrow and Stargirl to do their thing in Desert."

X

 **DESERT BREACHERS' STAND**

It had required for him to go against every last instinct in him, but the Flash had jumped back into the fight, letting his sister deal with the one who held her back.

"So… you're a meta… that's neat… What's your thing, do you slow down time, is that it? No, that's not it, but it's something like that, yeah?" The 'keep talking' thing was either going to work or it would piss off the guy into doing something else. She didn't know which way it would go, but she was more concerned with freeing herself, so that was what she did. She'd have to stop him from using whatever power he had on her or anyone else, too. "Why are you guys here, what's the plan?"

"Nothing you need to concern yourself over," the man finally spoke, and she grinned.

"So you do have a voice, good to know. Tell you what, I'm not even using my speed right now, just good old…" She slammed her heels at his ankle with all her force, and in his surprise he let go, just distracted long enough that he had no hold over her _or_ her speed for a few seconds, and it was more than enough. She hit him with a knockout, and he was on the ground. "I really hope you don't get trampled, I do," she promised him before running back into the fight, too.

X

 **BREACH EARTH, DESERT QUARTER**

The guards were not blind. As soon as some of them spotted Sara and the device in the case, they understood that this thing was meant to stop the ones who'd crossed on to Main… and they couldn't allow that to happen. With a rallying cry, the guards had started to converge on Sara, so they converged on Ava before her.

"Keep working!" Ava shouted over her shoulder, dealing with those first who came toward them. "Don't try and help me, whatever happens!" It was not an unnecessary demand. Sara wanted nothing more than to go and back Ava up, so she wouldn't be fending off the Desert guards on her own, but then if she did that… No one else would know how to operate the device, and if it was damaged or taken…

Had they gone into this on their own, they would never have gotten to fend those guards off and keep working. The guards would have gotten the better of Ava in the end, and Sara after her. But they had the old woman's children, and everyone else who had rallied behind them, and as they swept in to lend support to Stargirl, the push back really found its footing. Seeing this, Sara was able to concentrate, recalling the instructions her sister had drilled into her when they'd picked up the case from ARGUS headquarters.

Muttering the steps under her breath, her hands worked over the controls. She thought about Laurel. She thought about her father. She thought… about the War girl, life slipping out of her along with her blood. She had to stop for a moment, gripping the sides of the case until her hands stopped twitching. She looked to the side, to Ava and the others as they held back the guards, managed bit by bit to subdue them. One more breath, and she got back to work.

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

 **DESERT BREACHERS' STAND**

The goal was to keep the breachers from getting out too far from their crossing point. Regardless of how much or little they knew about what was happening on the other side, over in Desert, they all knew one thing: keep them close enough that the wave will hit them. If they got too far, they'd have to be caught the old fashioned way, which would be that much more of an issue if too many of them got past them.

Jim Olsen had a lot of frustration in him after seeing two of his friends be taken, seeing another one of them being grievously injured. He may not have had powers, but he was going to make damn sure none of these breachers got past him.

Killer Frost had a pretty good idea of ways she could use her powers to keep the breachers from leaving. Pulling to the depths of her abilities, she created blocks, walls, chutes, anything she could conjure that would force the Desert people back. They came from a place so removed from dealing with this kind of ice that they quickly knew better than to try her. Now, if they had been from Frozen Quarter, this might have been a completely different situation.

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

Watching the progress of the push back against the Desert breachers, it felt to all of them watching on the screens more and more like they were watching the fight for the tipping of the scales. If the breachers got through the line, it would all be over, but if they succeeded in pushing them back… they might actually have a shot at holding the city.

"I see Jim!" Ruby pointed. Lisa and Samantha looked to where she was pointing. "He's really upset, isn't he?"

"I know the feeling," Samantha breathed. She hadn't set out to be a fighter, but she'd joined her team out there enough times now that being here now made her feel like she was in the wrong place. She should have been at their side, doing… something. But then she supposed that was what Cait Snow had been feeling for the past four days, being back here with a power she couldn't use without putting her unborn child at risk. If _she_ had found her own way to help, then Samantha could do the same.

"Laurel? Miss Lance?" she turned her chair to approach the woman standing there with them. She looked down to meet the call.

"Laurel's fine," she insisted.

"Okay," Samantha nodded. "Can we talk about that device of yours? I think I might have a way to put it to use in other ways across the city." Laurel looked intrigued at once. "Ruby, can you be my chauffeur?" Samantha turned to her daughter, who gladly moved behind the chair, rolling her off to join Laurel as they moved away from the hub.

"Come on, Sara…" Iris breathed, looking at the screens. The circle of breachers had started out tightly packed. It had widened with the breachers' movement forward. Some sections, where the push back was more successful, were shrinking again, but others were getting wider, too wide for their own good. "Come on…"

X

 **BREACH EARTH, DESERT QUARTER**

"I didn't know your name… I called you Little General, and maybe that was what you wanted the world to see. I'm sorry I didn't see… I'm sorry I was too late… But you showed me something, and I will remember you. I'm going to do everything I can to stop others from being manipulated the way you were."

Kneeling at the device placed on the ground before her, Sara did what she could to concentrate on the task at hand and not on the sounds she could hear around her and what they might indicate… Setting off her sister's device, letting it do what it was meant to do, that was what she had to do.

"I will find your name. I don't know how, and it might take a while. But I will find your name. I promise."

Laurel had told her she would know when the device would be active, and when that happened…

"Ava, we're on! Stargirl!" she shouted, and the next thing she knew, she'd been scooped up and carried back into the sky.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	34. DAY 068 (vol 2, ch 34)

_Day 68 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 34_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **DESERT BREACHERS' STAND**

Quentin Lance was very aware of the limitations of his abilities, and for that he was always very mindful of setting off the start of his time as Hourman, so not to end up wasting any of it because he'd believed the time had come. Even as the breachers had started to move, he hadn't done it, not right away. And when the speedsters had moved in to try and contain the lot as long as possible, he hadn't done it then either. Only when the line had broken, and the push had started, then… then he'd gone into Hourman mode, and he got to work. They wouldn't get past him.

Not too far off, there was his partner, the relatively mild-mannered Ed Thawne making way for the dark Obsidian. He was particularly apt at spotting the metahumans in the bunch of Desert breachers, and he focused his abilities on those in particular, preventing them from being active too long, knowing they would have been selected for this, to ensure the breachers would get to their destination. Whatever they had to throw at him, they soon learned they were no match.

Lucy Lane was giving them much of the same, meta or not. The Black Canary's cry was heard well across the field, and those who were nearest to it were forced to discover just how strong that cry could be. Together, the three of them were making excellent work of holding the line, though they all wished Stargirl was still with them here and there, knowing how much more they could have done with _her_ skill set working alongside them. But she was off in Desert with the Green Arrow, and they knew everything they did was so that what _they_ did would be worth it. So they carried on.

"Waverider!" Leonard Snart called, and though they didn't divert their attention from the breachers, he knew his teammates would be listening. "There's a light out there," he reported, and they knew: the device had been activated. The wave would wash in before long, washing out again to carry back the Desert natives. They needed to keep pushing, harder than before.

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

Ruby watched the screens from the window of the small conference room where her mother and Laurel Lance had gone to discuss Miss Lance's device and Samantha's ideas for its further use. She could see the fight very well from here, much as her mother had not wanted her to watch too close. Once the two women had started discussing the device, no one had been too preoccupied with telling her to look elsewhere.

For a few minutes, she looked on, seeing the progress of the push back, the struggle on some sides more than others. She tried to keep an eye on Jim Olsen, the only one remaining of her mother's team out there in the field, her favorite uncle. She would look at all the others too, though, fascinated with everything they were able to do.

"Hourman, that's your dad, right?" she looked over her shoulder to Laurel, sitting at the table with her mother. She looked up, nodding. "He's amazing," Ruby reported.

"He's fighting them?" Laurel asked, excusing herself from Samantha, the curiosity stronger than her as she moved to stand next to Ruby and see the screens, too.

"Yeah, look," Ruby was pointing.

Laurel could definitely see him. She was aware of what her father could do, at least they had finally gotten around to explain it to her, but it was one thing to hear about it and a whole other one to actually see him in action. It wasn't as though her father struggled to be active in any way, but to see him out there… It hardly seemed possible that _this_ was the same man as her own Quentin Lance.

She'd been angry at him, too, just a bit. The whole reasoning behind it was not the same as with Sara, and the Green Arrow secret, but there had still been this element of how he had kept all those secrets from her, too, and not knowing how to feel about it, about his involvement in all that. But then she looked at this man here, how hard he fought to push back to the breachers… She hadn't really known them, her sister, her father. There had been this part of their lives they kept from her, and it had taken actually talking to Sara for her to understand she didn't need to be angry at them, not the way she'd been in the beginning. She looked at him now and she was proud to be his daughter.

"Wait, look!" Ruby gasped. Behind them, they could hear squeaking, as Samantha worked to roll herself up to the window to watch along with them. All three of them stood there and watched the burst of light that came out of nowhere. "Is that…"

"It is," Laurel confirmed, opening the conference room's door, so they could go out and move back into the hub to get closer to the screens.

Everyone was watching now. No one was looking anywhere else than at the screens that showed what was happening at the Desert breachers' stand, as the light bloomed out of the center where, some time ago, the breachers had been emerging, one by one. And as it started to form, it also started to spread out. The breachers nearest to it started to push forward, none of them wanting to find out what would happen when that light touched them. But it was moving faster than them, and soon it started to overtake them.

"Woah…" Iris breathed, looking to Cait at her side, just as stunned. The more the light spread, overtaking the breachers, all they could wonder was what would happen when the wave reached its end and started to pull back in… if it pulled back in…

X

 **DESERT BREACHERS' STAND**

Jim Olsen very nearly got friendly with the business end of a Desert breacher's blade when he caught sight of the light wave moving toward them. He'd been aware of it, they all had, but as it grew nearer, the Desert breachers only fought harder to get past them, to get away from that light. They didn't know what it was going to do, not like Jim and those on his side did, but that didn't matter. The breachers weren't interested in finding out.

The one Jim had been fighting against now, he had his arm swung up with that blade, ready to strike down – if Jim had to guess – right at his neck. But then the light touched him. It touched them both, and for a moment both men stood there, frozen, as though someone had hit pause on the world. They could see each other, and neither of them knew what was going to happen next. The breacher looked like he wanted to try and strike him anyway.

Killer Frost had been spraying blocks of ice as fast as she could create them, forcing breachers off their feet as the wave was coming toward them. When the light hit them, and her, too, they all came to a stop, breathing hard, distracted, waiting… In that moment, it seemed the uncertainty translated into Amaya reasserting herself, the appearance of Killer Frost melting away as she stood in the light and waited.

The Flash had been pushing back breachers again and again, going in circles, even as the light had started to spread out. He stayed out of it as long as he could, pushing more breachers into the light as he went. He could see his sister doing the same, and it only encouraged him to keep going. He'd been worried for a moment, while she'd been in the grasp of that meta, but he had trusted in her, and she had gotten herself free. Finally, when the light reached them, they were together, watching all around.

Leonard Snart looked to his team as the light caught up to them. This was it. Whatever happened next… He looked back, not to the center but where the light had gone. Had it stopped spreading? Was it coming back?

Yes… The wave was washing out again. He could see it grow thinner, see the streets on the outside, and then it washed back over him, leaving him where he stood. And as he kept watching, he could see those breachers who'd been nearest to him… It was as though they had faded away, or… become part of the light. There really would be no telling what happened to them, not until they heard from Stargirl and the Green Arrow again. It would be really awkward if they'd just caused all those breachers to cease to exist.

X

 **BREACH EARTH, DESERT QUARTER**

The Desert people who'd joined them, lead by the old woman and her children, had been warned to look for their signal. Once Sara and Ava would take to the sky, they had to brace themselves for the arrival of the wave, had to try and move away from the center of the square where the breachers had been crossing… as much as they could.

They did exactly that, scooping up and carrying the guards they'd been working to subdue all this time. They carried them along, as far as they could get them. There was no telling how far it would reach, and how the wave would manifest itself.

"You alright?" Ava asked, minding her hold as they remained airborne. Sara nodded, holding on to her as well. She was entirely aware of the dim pain in her side, pressed to Ava's side, but then it was either that or being stuck with someone pressing hard into her injury as they floated up there, so she could deal with that.

As they watched, the small burst of light – which had signalled the activation of the device – had held in the center of the crossing point for what felt like an eternity. All around them, everyone looked to be holding their breath, waiting… waiting…

And then the light started to grow, spreading out from the center.

Many of the people on the ground started to back up even further than they'd gone before. Who knew how far this thing would reach? They'd been told it shouldn't harm them, but how certain were they? Ava and Sara had the best vantage point in this, so they could see how the light expanded, and expanded. They would estimate it reached out maybe twenty-five feet from the center at the very widest it went. It never reached any of the people below. When it started to pull back – and it did pull back – there was a notable sense of relief, both for those on the ground and for the two women up in the sky.

What they could also see from up there was that, however many of the people had come to lend support in the beginning, more of them were coming to join them now. That might have been for the best, as the retreating light deposited its 'gift.' Almost right to the edge of where the light had reached, it left behind people who hadn't been there before, many of them looking as though they'd been frozen mid action when the light had found them, because they appeared here much in the same position.

The wave was still retreating, but as those returned breachers came to their senses, it didn't take them long to realize where they were. And already the old woman's troop was moving in to deal with them.

"It worked…" Sara had to laugh just a bit, stunned. Laurel's device… it worked. She'd done it.

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

 **DESERT BREACHERS' STAND**

For a moment it did seem to Jim as though that blade _would_ reach him, like it started to fall again, and he braced… but then the breacher faded away and was gone, taking his blade with him. It was only in that moment that Jim realized the light had left him… it was rolling back toward the crossing point. And the further it went, the more breachers it took along with it. Every last one of them was disappearing, leaving only the heroes, the agents, and the officers.

Amaya felt the light wash back out to its source, though she felt no need to shift back into Killer Frost mode, looking around and watching as the wave did exactly what it had been promised to do. With the breachers disappearing as they did, it left behind the space they'd been occupying, the space she had been defending along with the others. The ground had been beaten by feet, by ammo of more than one nature, including the ice she had created, sticking out of the ground around her. She still didn't understand why she'd turned back into herself within the light, but there was no time to consider it here.

Kid Flash looked to her brother, as they both took in the emptiness of the field without the breachers all around it. It was like someone had just snapped their fingers and then… the battle was gone, leaving only one side behind. If they couldn't see the signs of it all actually happening, they would have could have believed it never did.

"Woah, hey… you okay?" Oliver quickly reached to steady his sister when he saw her stumble just a bit.

"Fine, I'm fine, Olly," she insisted. "Just coming down from all of that," she motioned around them. It had all stopped so suddenly, part of her still felt like she was supposed to be doing something. "I thought we were past the part where you treated me like a porcelain… Hey!" Now _she_ was the one catching him, though just barely, with him being heavier. It gave her flashbacks to the day she had discovered her speed, that car coming at Anatoly and her, how she'd been unable to carry him completely out of harm's way.

She barely managed to lower him to the ground, even as the Waverider's team came hurrying toward the two of them.

"What happened?" Agent Lane asked.

"I-I don't know, he just sort of collapsed," Thea replied, panic rising.

"Let's get him to the…" Leonard started to say, then stopped, biting back a word as he remembered the jump ship was still in Desert, and the Waverider itself was off… in War? Haven? "Wild Dog!" he called out. "We need your van!"

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

When the last of the wave had finished washing back out and they could see the Desert breachers had completely disappeared, there'd been a brief uncertainty. Should they cheer? They didn't know the state of things on the other side of the breach. Still, after those first few seconds, there had been a round of applause. Many of them had looked to Laurel Lance, knowing the device had been her doing. She'd been caught by surprise at this, feeling everyone's gratitude hit her and having difficulty keeping a straight face… she was smiling, feeling her eyes brim with tears just a bit.

Standing apart from the agents, from the cluster around Laurel – Iris, and Cait, and Lisa, and Samantha and her daughter – Director Heywood had a private moment of relief, seeing this situation defused with very little impact to the city. It wasn't all over, only this part of it, he couldn't forget, but knowing how much worse it could have gotten, he couldn't ignore this small victory.

With this small victory however there remained the new wrinkle he'd been presented when Miss West and Miss Snow had come to his office.

He had heard a few mentions of missing people in the past few days, but he had been caught up in the non-stop situation around the city and he could only trust that his people would know how to delegate as they needed to. Now he wished he had paid attention sooner. It hadn't taken him long to find, through ARGUS communications, the videos showing the kidnappings of both Zari Tomaz and Kendra Saunders, along with the testimonials of the taking of Ronnie Raymond.

Seeing his grandson in those videos, he could hardly know how to react. It was Nathaniel, no doubt to it. He hadn't seen him since he'd been two, but he had kept up with him as best he could, once he'd left Slow Quarter and come to Main. What he had discovered in those searches… A part of him felt as though he could have prevented this. If he'd kept Hank from leaving, maybe… But no, he could not have prevented his son from following his heart, could he?

Whoever was behind this, they had to know the connection between them… but how? So few were aware, _no one_ , really. To make that connection between them would have taken some work, and he didn't like to imagine what kind of plan would have been so involved as to go digging, to find the thing that could bring _him_ down. Now here he was, with a choice to make, and it really was no choice at all. They wanted to use his grandson's actions against him and he couldn't let them.

He would have to inform people, those who needed to be informed. He had to be entirely transparent, showing he couldn't have known about any of this, that he'd only now learned of his grandson's involvement. If he had to take a step back, he would do it, though with the city, here on Main and across the quarters of Breach really, in such turmoil, would they really put ARGUS through a shift of command? Even having to deal with his transparency would take him away from duty… maybe that was the entire point. If he was going to have to do anything, he needed to ensure that he wouldn't leave unbalance in his wake.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	35. DAY 070 (vol 2, ch 35)

_Day 70 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 35_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

The agent at reception, seeing the three of them forced to wait without being seen to while everyone else attended to the Desert breachers' stand, had eventually offered them coffee, having it brought over to them. As Nora Allen, Moira Queen, and Robert Queen went on talking, it seemed after a while that any sort of pretense between them became pointless. Before they knew it, Nora learned of Oliver and Thea Queen, better known to her as the Flash and Kid Flash, while the Queens were told of Firestorm, also known as Barry Allen, Nora's son.

As the Queens had not set foot on Main until very recently, hadn't even known of their children's heroic endeavors, it was something of a blessing to find themselves in the presence of Nora Allen. While she had not known about the people under the masks, she _had_ been aware of the various interventions of the speedster siblings. She had happily relayed some of those to the stunned parents, feeling many a swelling of pride in their hearts with each additional story.

They had not gotten so friendly as to divulge the fact that neither they nor their children were in fact human. It was by no means out of distrust for the woman who so generously caught them up on their children's stories, but having spent all these years on Earth, they knew the fate that could await certain aliens if they were not careful with their identities. Perhaps in time this would change.

As a whole, Nora Allen would find herself doing most of the talking. When she wasn't telling Robert and Moira about their own children, she would speak of her own son. She knew very little as to what could have led to these powers he had or the transformation that came with it. She had never spoken to Barry directly about the whole thing, though she'd had conversations with Firestorm.

He would speak to her, always with this 'protection' given to him by the fact that she wasn't supposed to know it was him under that head of fire, and she worried he might stop confiding in her if he knew that she knew. Even then, whenever she would try and discover the origin of his powers, he would never actually tell her. He'd say he didn't know, but she could see right through him. He just wouldn't say. Eventually she would just stop trying to get him to say it. Someday, maybe…

The further they'd spoken, they had come to at least put some of Nora's mind at ease. Moira _had_ heard, through Iris, of another situation happening back on the other Earth. If Barry wasn't here on Main, then he had to be out there, with the others. Whether or not this would actually be reassuring, when they didn't know _what_ this other situation was…

"We've been sitting here a long time," Robert spoke slowly after a moment of silence had fallen over them. Under his words was the real statement he couldn't get around to speaking: _Something big is going on out there… where our children are._ Moira looked down to her cup for a moment, catching her reflection in the last of the liquid it held and feeling as though she could see exhaustion and worry rippling in that cooling coffee.

"Yes, we have," Nora Allen let out a breath, setting her empty cup at her side before getting up to go toward the poor reception agent again. She was ready to give the guy an earful, coffee or no coffee.

But then Iris West came skittering toward them.

"Moira, Robert…" she looked to the pair of them, breathing deep. They got up to their feet at once, knowing… something had happened. Something had happened with their children.

X

As much as they had attempted to minimize the contact with the breachers, eventually there'd been no other way, especially as they had to keep pushing them back to ensure the light would wash over them. There had been many injuries, some of them minor, some not so minor. Five agents had died, and two officers with them. They had done everything they could, and they tried to tell themselves that it could have been so much worse, but how were they going to sell that reasoning to the dead's families?

Among the heroes, the injuries had thankfully been, for the most part, minimal. There'd be some bruises, a few bandages, but nothing that would keep them off their feet for whatever came next… The only ones who'd needed to be rushed back, via Jim Olsen's van once again, had been the Queens.

Thea was still reeling, confused by what was happening with her brother, and still sort of jittery and unbalanced by everything she'd dealt with. The benefit of their being speedsters, a lot of the time, was that they would bounce back a bit faster, heal up a lot of the times, and she was sure that she must have, that this was all mostly in her head. But then her brother… he wasn't coming around yet, was he?

After he'd collapsed out there, as much as they tried, he would not come around. He was out cold, even as they packed him on to Jim Olsen's van and they took off, Thea and Oliver, Jim and Amaya, while the rest of them had stayed behind, tending to the wounded, waiting for their teammates who were still off in Desert Quarter.

The entire drive back to headquarters, Thea kept hold of her brother's hand, giving it a squeeze every other second, hoping he would finally wake up. She'd pulled the mask from his face, needing to see him. Sometimes the smallest static spark would leap from her fingers to his hand, wanting so desperately to see him start to come around. But he hadn't, not yet, and finally they had reached headquarters. The next thing she knew, they were loading him on to a stretcher and wheeling him into the building. She never left his side, and she would have liked to see anyone try and stop her.

The other injured from that morning were just starting to arrive along with them, so it felt like the chaos had rolled in with them. Thea barely paid it any mind. All she could think about was how they might not know how to help him. He wasn't even human, they…

"Thea!" She turned around, the sound of her name carrying more weight still than to realize whose voice this was. She still didn't know her parents' voices that well. But she saw them there, hurrying in their direction, and it filled her with such staggering relief. Her mother reached them first, and it took Thea a moment to realize… Everyone else had slowed to a crawl, except her, and her mother and father… It was the first time she witnessed them actually showing their speed.

When they caught up and slowed back down, Jim, Amaya, and the medics who'd already joined the stretcher's progress, had briefly been startled before they carried on their way.

"What happened?" Robert asked.

"I don't know…" Thea told him. She felt just a bit stronger now that they were here. Was that even possible, after so little time, so much of it spent running around the city? "He was fine one second, being his overprotective big brother self as usual, but then he just… What if they don't know how to help him?" she looked to her parents, not saying aloud what she knew they had to understand.

"If we were back in Haven, we know someone, his name is Wells, he…" Moira started to say, but then she spotted people coming through at the other end of the open area, seeming to have only just come through the crossing room. Going off a brief conversation they'd had when the young woman had visited along with Tommy and the women who were even now accompanying the two of them, she had to wonder…

Thea had hurried over to catch them and bring over to where they were now examining Oliver. Tommy looked to the unconscious speedster with evident concern. He may have only just gotten to know the Queen children, but their parents were the closest thing to family he had and actually liked, and this bonded Oliver and Thea to him, too, half-sibling or not.

"He'll be alright," Felicity told the Queens with confidence. "When I arrived here, I was in a coma, but they took care of me, they nursed me back."

"They might not know how," Thea went on. Ever since she'd learned that she and her family were not human, one of her greatest fears had been… well, this. What if something happened to her that was so different because of what she was?

Felicity looked to the stretcher for a moment. The medics were checking his vitals, attempting to find the source of his ailment… Taking a step forward, she let her eyes take a look through him. There might have been something, a projectile of some sort, or…

"Can you turn him on his side?" she told the medics, who looked to her like they wouldn't.

"Do it," Agent Drake stepped up, and the two sighed, turning Oliver on to his side. Felicity gave her a nod of thanks before moving up.

"There's something here, it's small…" The others grouped in. If she hadn't pointed it out, they might never have seen it. They still had to follow her insistence or it might have looked like a freckle. "You need to be careful, the way it's burrowed in there… you might do more harm than good by taking it out, but if you don't I think he might stay this way."

X

 **BREACH EARTH, DESERT QUARTER**

One of the things Ava Sharpe had come to understand, as she and the rest of the Waverider team would travel from one quarter to another in their day to day dealings, was that sometimes it was best to stand back and let the people of any given city deal with their own problems where they could. They would intervene where they were needed, but beyond that…

Here in Desert, they had done their part. They had brought the device and they had activated it, bringing back those who'd gone and crossed on to Main to cause trouble. Now that they were back, the old woman and her people appeared to have things well under control. Ava had brought Sara back down to the ground, next to where the case still sat on the ground, before letting go of her.

"Not mad about being back on my feet," Sara admitted, and Ava laughed. Sara's hand went to her bandaged side, looking down to make sure she wasn't bleeding again. All was well.

Looking out ahead of them, as the breachers were dealt with by their people, Sara took a breath that felt a lot like relief. Some of them appeared to have been injured, but overall most of them seemed to be alright. Whatever they had done out there, they would be punished as it was fit, but they wouldn't have been sent to their deaths by whoever had set all this in motion… most of them.

Four bodies had been among the returned breachers, each of them clearly dead. They had sort of wondered if the wave would pick up anyone that no longer lived, if any deaths did occur. Now they knew. Four… out of over a hundred… How many deaths had the other side suffered? How many injured? They would find out sooner or later.

"We should head back to Main," Ava told her. Sara turned to look at her, looked down to the case on the ground, looked up to the crossing point. It was still open, wasn't it? They hadn't scrambled it, like the one from War on the first day, but somehow she didn't see it being a problem again. Whatever had been meant to happen had happened.

So they started back for the jump ship. It wasn't until they were back inside and out of the sun that the exhaustion really seemed to kick in. They sat there in their seats in silence for a minute. Ava got up for a moment, returning with water for the both of them.

"Cheers," Sara raised her bottle and Ava did the same. "When this is over," she spoke after another beat of silence. "I'd kind of like to see some of the other quarters out there. Does the Waverider take… guests?"

"Depends on the guest," Ava tipped her head. "If we're going off of accomplishments… I'd say you earned it today."

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

The appearance of the jump ship in the sky, flying down to land in the field where the breachers had held their ground, filled those who'd stayed in wait with much needed relief. The two women, pilot and passenger both, emerged once again dressed as they'd been before their departure, the Green Arrow and Agent Sharpe rejoining their teams.

"Looking a little red there," Sin declared, her greeting matched with a happy tap to Sara's arm. "Should have put on some sunscreen."

"Glad you're okay, too, Speedy," Sara gave her a smile. "How did it go out here?" she asked then, looking from Sin to Michael, to Cisco and Cynthia. There was no point in putting off the bad part, she needed to know.

"Seven," Michael gave her the answer. "Five agents, two officers." Sara took this in, just as she'd needed to back in Desert. Seven here, four there, but… how many more saved? Those eleven would be mourned, remembered. If they could just have gotten through with everyone alive, that would have been best, but they _had_ done the best they could, and now they had to move forward.

Even as Sara and her team were sharing their sides of the breachers' stand to one another, Ava and hers were doing the same. They told her of the seven lost here, and she told them of the four lost there. She told them how the people in Desert had dealt with the returned breachers, and they told her about the Flash's collapse and how he'd been taken back to headquarters.

"Any word?" Ava asked.

"Not yet," Lucy replied.

"And now that we're done here, I can guess it won't be long before we're back to ferrying breachers back to their quarters," Leonard moved to the jump ship, eager to ensure the jump ship was still in good condition. Ed went to assist him in his diagnostics, leaving the two roommates/agents to talk some more while Quentin went to see his daughter. Sara saw him walk up and excused herself from the others to join him.

They talked briefly, both wanting to know that the other had fared well on their side of things. It was getting to be easier for them to interact in this way, both of them aware the other's secret identity and all that came along with it. When this was all over, when they could actually stop and breathe and be themselves again for longer than the time to get some shut eye, they would get the chance to really talk, but until then… So long as they could touch base, it was all they could ask for.

"Welcome back," Laurel's voice sounded in her ear as she moved off with her team, watching her father head toward the jump ship, and Sara smiled.

"Good to be back," she spoke in all honesty. "Good to hear your voice, too. You did good with that device of yours."

"Might just be the gift that keeps on giving," Laurel informed her. "I've been talking with someone here, Samantha Arias?"

"Yeah, how's she doing?"

"They still don't know about her leg, but she's not letting it slow her down. We've been talking about creating a smaller version, to send breachers back on an individual basis."

"Can you actually do that?" Sara asked, stunned. That would save a lot of time, no doubt.

"Of course," Laurel replied confidently. "Although unless we can send them somewhere specific and not just to the same point in their own quarter then they'll just be roaming and probably just jump back the first chance they get. It's a work in progress."

"I have all the confidence you two will figure it out. I heard about the Flash, anything new there?"

"No. There's something embedded in his neck, they're trying to find a way to get it out without making it worse. No idea how it happened or when either." There was a pause, Sara taking all this in and sending some thoughts toward the downed speedster. "So you and yours are heading back into the city?"

"Looks that way. Hasn't stopped while I was gone, has it?"

"Unfortunately not," Laurel told her.

"Didn't think so." If there was any way, she really needed to grab something to eat on the way to… wherever. Loosening up her arms as she walked, she frowned to herself. "Hey, while you're trying to figure out that portable device, any chance you can get your hands on some… after sun lotion or something?"

"You got it," Laurel promised, a chuckle in her voice, and Sara couldn't explain how thankful she was for this brief moment with her sister, her mind leaping back to memories of beach days, the two of them as children… It all seemed like a whole other life ago, but in that moment it felt like the memories were hers again, of this life. "Hold on, Cait says there's a situation a block north from your location."

Sara let out a breath… Here they went again…

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	36. DAY 072 (vol 2, ch 36)

_Day 72 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 36_

 **BREACH EARTH, SLOW QUARTER**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **MANY YEARS AGO**

 **HOME OF HENRY HEYWOOD**

He would not say their life was an ordinary one in any way that would insinuate he was not satisfied by it. Quite the opposite, Henry Heywood could not imagine his life with his wife and son being any better than the way it was now. His work satisfied him, but not nearly so much as coming home to his family did. He would drive home already thinking about what new story his boy Hank would tell him about that day.

But then there came a day that changed their completely normal lives forever.

One day he came home to find his wife concerned over the fact that Hank had not come home from school yet. He was thirteen by then, and Henry hadn't thought too much of it. He was in all likelihood off somewhere hanging out with his friends. He knew what time to get home for dinner, or to call if there was anything at all holding him back from returning.

Only time passed, and still there was no sign of Hank. Henry tried not to appear concerned, so not to make his wife worry any more than she already did. He went out to look for him. He checked with his friends and none of them had seen him. He checked any place he might have been, but still nothing. Finally, he started for home again, wondering how he would tell his wife…

He stopped his car, as he had just spotted the familiar form of his son walking slowly up the street. He got out, ready to give him the talking to of his life… But then just as he called out to him, Hank turned around. He looked so stunned as he ran into his father's arms, Henry didn't know what to say. There was something about him that looked different, too, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

It wasn't until after they'd returned home, where Hank had been embraced within an inch of his life by his mother, that Henry finally got the story out of him. At first, he didn't believe a word of it. Hank claimed he had been to another world… for weeks.

The way he said it, he'd been coming home from school when he saw something very strange. Somewhere ahead of him, there was something like a hole in the world, and through that hole, he could see people and objects, moving so very fast, so fast that he could barely keep up looking at them. Hank hadn't known what to make of it, so he'd approached, and he'd reached out his hand… and then the next thing he knew, he was on the other side.

He had lost his way before long, and after that he couldn't find his way home again. When he'd gone to their house, other people lived there. He'd ended up getting taken in by child services. No matter how many times he told them his name, date of birth, his parents' name, his address, his school, it was all as though he did not exist. They thought he was lying, that he wouldn't tell them the truth. They had put him in foster care until they could sort him out. All this time, he'd tried to get back here, until finally he had found the place where he had first appeared and finally he'd seen it… a hole in the world, where everything moved very slow. He had walked through again, and now here they were.

"Son, you've only been gone a few hours, you…" But looking at him now, he could just sort of see it. He looked older. Not by years, no, but he was a growing boy, it only took weeks and months for him to look so different and…

In time, Hank had been able to prove even more that what he said was true. And in the months to follow, he would discover other holes like the one he'd first found, leading him to many other places. Some were good, some were terrifying. He had ended up in one place when he was fifteen, coming back with some sickness in him. The way he told it, the air was choking him and he'd turned right back. Henry would keep his son's secret, even from his wife. It didn't have to change their lives, although the existence of other worlds… Maybe someday he could try and follow Hank on one of these adventures.

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

 **PRESENT DAY**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

His record spoke for itself. He didn't know what these people had expected to happen, or how they would have used this information if he hadn't gotten ahead of it and spoken to his superiors, but it was over. He had told the truth about his family, and his grandson's involvement in the kidnappings. And when all was said and done, he was told to keep doing what he was doing, and to attempt to the best of his abilities to find those people and to apprehend his grandson and his partner. Henry assured them that was precisely what he would do.

Even though he had handled the situation, deep down he still felt well in the thick of it. Nate was out there. He had kidnapped three people, would possibly take more of them before this was over… He didn't know if they were hurt, or even alive… He didn't want to think about his grandson taking anyone's life, but at this point what did he know? The man was a stranger to him, just as he would be to him.

He had to put this out of his mind. From this point on, all he had to think about was that his city was overrun with breachers intent on causing trouble, that several quarters of Breach had been attacked or were under threat of attack, and that several people had been kidnapped, possibly with the intent of causing even more distraction on top of everything else happening all at the same time. That one of these kidnappers was related to him could not and would not matter any more than anything else.

X

 **BREACH EARTH, HAVEN QUARTER**

 **MANY YEARS AGO**

 **HOME OF HANK HEYWOOD**

He had not wanted to let his son go. Especially now, with his wife dead and buried, he couldn't imagine seeing the last of his family leave him behind. But he also knew that Hank needed to follow his heart. He'd met a girl, he was in love… And seeing how theirs was the only one that ran at such a slow pace, how could he keep allowing himself to make leaps back and forth in these different speeds? In the end, Henry could only give him his blessing, and a request that he would visit.

It wasn't long that he realized visits would be made complicated by their circumstances. But it could be dealt with. By now, Henry knew a lot more about this world they lived in. He had a new vocabulary for this thing he had been aware of since his son was thirteen. There were no holes in the world but breaches, and these other worlds were called quarters… and there was another Earth. He had learned all this after he'd found his way to the ARGUS outpost and started working there.

Thanks to this position, he had access to a dedicated crossing point, a breach that would take him to this quarter where his son and his daughter-in-law would make their home. They called it Haven. The first time he had visited, the time before this one, his son's wife was about to give birth to their child, a boy, they'd learned. Henry could not wait to meet this grandchild, as strange as it was to think that it could all be happening so fast. Hank had grown up so fast – literally – and now looked more like his brother than his son. But he was used to this difference in time by now.

Still, it was not as easy when, upon his arrival today, he found that his grandson had not only been born but, in the time since his last visit a few months ago in his time, the boy had aged two years. Little Nathaniel had been shy to approach the stranger who said he was his grandfather. And there was something else, too. As he learned that day, his grandson had to be careful. There was a sickness in his blood. He was a hemophiliac. Hank was certain it could have come from him, from the one time he'd ended up in Mist, but Henry reassured him it likely had nothing to do with this.

"Dad," Hank had told him, as they sat together, shortly before Henry's return to Slow. "We were talking," he started hesitantly, looking back to his wife back inside the house. "We think it might be best… The thing is, Nate might not… He won't understand, the way you're not…" Hank had struggled with the explanation, but Henry stopped him. He knew where he was going.

That was the last time he saw his grandson. He kept in touch with his son, though even this became more and more rare, even after he transferred out of Slow.

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

 **PRESENT DAY**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

Despite the sacrifices required for it, the entire thing had been much too easy. Two agents cornered, knocked out, and stripped of their uniforms later, and they had been able to sneak their way into the building. The 'sacrifices' involved here were that they'd both had to leave behind their respective weapons – so not to draw much unwanted attention on to themselves – before coming anywhere near the building.

It would have been considered unwise, playing with fire… Nate would have said he happened to like playing fire, that it was kind of 'his thing.' Even then, he had to admit, the reason why he and Raymond both had decided to sneak into the place _was_ a tiny bit stupid and reckless, but then neither of them cared. They were just curious to see what was happening in there. And also, maybe… They'd been told they couldn't go into Haven, and they hadn't… but no one had said anything about not looking in on the place from somewhere outside of Haven. Where else could they do that?

It was chaos. All around them, wounded agents were being tended to, while others continued to monitor various breacher crossings across the city, dispatching their people to deal with it all as soon as possible. Nate looked on to this and thought how, in a different life, he might have been all too glad to jump into the fight, if only to knock some heads around and…

"You two, in here," a man suddenly addressed them. Nate and Raymond turned to see another uniformed man looking at them. By the looks of him, he was ranked higher than the two poor saps whose clothes they'd stolen. There was something strangely familiar about this man, but Nate couldn't explain why. All he knew was that it looked as though they might be very close to being busted, and they had to find a way out of it. With any luck, this man did not know all of his agents by face.

With little else to do, they had gone into the room they'd been pointed toward. Nate had gone in first, followed by Raymond. But then all at once, the high ranked man struck Raymond on the back of the head with his gun, sending him tumbling to the ground even as the gun was now turned to be aimed directly at Nate's face. He didn't move.

"On your knees, hands behind your head," the man said as he shut the door. Nate considered his options. "Now, Nathaniel." He froze. He knew his name. How did he know his name? "Knees." So he did as he was told. Cuffs clicked around his wrists. He was pushed on to a chair. "Of all the times for you to show up like this…" the man was saying as he now moved to cuff the unconscious Raymond. "The agents who belong to these uniforms, alive?"

"Who the hell are you?"

"My name is Henry Heywood. I'm the director of ARGUS and I am also your grandfather."

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

 **A FEW YEARS AGO**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

In his wildest dreams, all those years ago in Slow, he would never have imagined this. He, Henry Heywood, was just named Director of ARGUS, on a whole other Earth than the one where he had been born, in a place designated Slow Quarter. But here he was. The first time he had stepped into his office and taken a seat at his desk, the first thought he'd had… Hank… Nathaniel… He was now on a different Earth than them, but then for a long time he might as well have been on an entire other planet that _wasn't_ Earth for how much they had to do with one another.

Henry understood the reasons why Hank had made the choice he'd made, but still a part of him couldn't help but feel as though he had been abandoned.

Now he was here, and he wondered… Would there ever be a chance for him to connect with his grandson? He knew at least that Hank and his wife had no other children beyond Nate, but he had last seen the boy as a toddler, and now he had to be a grown man… Before he knew it, and in what might have been considered an abuse of power, he had turned to his computer and done some research. Being Director of ARGUS, he had access to databases across all the quarters of Breach, including Haven, where his son and his family…

He did find out some things about his grandson that day… things he now wished he didn't know. In the years since he'd been that small boy who'd sat happily on his knees, he had grown up into… a criminal. He was in prison.

Henry had closed the search at once, erased any trace of it. He didn't know what to do, he didn't know… Hank had never mentioned any of this, and it was no wonder. Was this why he'd been so distant in recent years? He wanted to reach out to him, he wanted… He didn't know what, but… No. He couldn't. Not now. He hated that it was true, but he was. For everyone's best interest, he just had to stay away… just as he'd always done.

X

 **PRESENT DAY**

For several minutes they sat in silence facing one another. Nate didn't want to believe a word the man said, because it sounded ridiculous. Considering everything he had seen and done in recent days it might have been a strange notion, but there were still limits to what a man could believe, and this… this he could not believe. Except… now that he'd said it, all he could think was _he looks like Dad_ again and again. He was almost sure he'd seen pictures of this man before, too. He wasn't about to show that he believed him though.

They were in trouble. They weren't supposed to come here. Once it got back to Vandal, and he had no doubt it would get back to him, oh they would be in big trouble. Most any other time he wouldn't have worried himself over this all that much, but Vandal Savage was not the kind of guy to take lightly, he'd learned _that_ very quick.

When this man, his 'grandfather,' started to speak, he went about laying out his history, how he'd been from Slow Quarter, how his son, Nate's father, was a breach hopper, who'd fallen in love with a Haven girl, how they had fallen out of touch because of the issue of the 'time difference' and how it would grow confusing… how he was aware of his criminal history. The whole time, Nate just stared at him, channeling as much disbelief as he could, even though everything he said made sense. And then he said how he believed the entire reason Nate had been called on to this job he was caught up in was so that it would make trouble for him at ARGUS.

He hadn't wanted to give any sign of breaking, but hearing this, he paused. In the back of their minds, both he and Raymond had wondered how on Earth Vandal and his people had chosen the two of them out of anyone in any quarter or either Earth to be part of this. As much as they could say their reputation preceded them, when it got down to it… what 'reputation' did they really have? But then if this man was really his grandfather…

"Before you get any ideas, I'll point out that I have already informed the higher ups about our relation, and it's all been cleared. So let's turn to another subject of interest. Zari Tomaz. Ronnie Raymond. Kendra Saunders." Nate sat up, but still he said nothing. "You can deny it all you want, but we have surveillance _and_ witnesses to the fact that you and Sleeping Beauty here, aka Raymond Palmer, are responsible. Tell me where they are, and we might be able to cut you a deal."

Nate stared at him, stared at Raymond unconscious on the ground. He looked back to Director Heywood and he shook his head. The look on the other man's face, the overpowering disappointment… If he didn't already have to believe they were family, that would have done it.

"I'll have security escort you to a couple holding cells, maybe some quiet time will jog your memory." Just like that, the director walked out, leaving the two of them sitting – and lying – there, to contemplate just how royally they'd screwed up… all because they cared about their home, and about their families back in Haven.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	37. DAY 074 (vol 2, ch 37)

_Day 74 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 37_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

Even as things were falling back into the strange 'normal' rhythm that had been the past few days, concentrating once again on the various smaller incidents around the city, it was near impossible not to stop and think about the moment when Raymond Palmer and Nathaniel Heywood's capture had been revealed to them.

Iris and Cait had just been to look in on Samantha. After getting out of bed to look on to the events of the Desert breachers' stand, she had agreed to go back to get some rest, accompanied by Ruby and Lisa, and a very eager Laurel Lance, to discuss this new device of theirs. Returning to their stations however they had come across a strange sort of hush. They couldn't say what was happening to cause it, until they took a few steps more and saw…

Director Heywood was walking ahead of two guards, each of them escorting one of the two handcuffed prisoners across headquarters, in full view of everyone. He didn't say anything, didn't specify who they were, so they might have been any random breachers, but those who knew who these men were to some degree or another – like Cait, and Iris, and Jim Olsen, and Amaya Jiwe – watched the procession with great surprise and intent.

Iris had turned to the two heroes at her side, sensing either one of them would be this close to charging at the men, knowing what they had done to their friends. Amaya was already shifting back into Killer Frost mode.

"This won't help," Iris told them quietly, and, though their faces still showed they would have taken the chance anyway, they remained at her side.

A few minutes later, the four of them had ended up back in the room with Samantha and her visitors, relaying the information they had just learned, specifically regarding _how_ the two had been captured. It would have been so easy to laugh at the stupidity of it all, but then all they could think about were their missing loved ones.

Those men had taken some of them personally, had injured others in this room, one of them unable to heal it off. And if they hadn't been personally responsible for the taking, then they at least had to know where they were being held along with the rest, had possibly interacted with them, had possibly… hurt them… Somewhere inside each of them there was a part, bigger in some, smaller in others, who would have happily grabbed either of those guys by the collar and shaken them or hit them or done whatever it would take to find out where they were keeping Wallace, and Zari, and Ronnie, and Kendra, and Carter, and Mag.

Amaya, back to herself again, still couldn't forget about how she'd been bested, how Ronnie had been taken because of it. She would look at Cait, seeing this look in her eyes, the deep worry she couldn't shake… She had put two of her best friends' future on the line, and that child growing inside Cait might not get to know its father, all because she and Killer Frost had not been fast enough, had not been able to stop those guys.

If she was looking for partners in guilt, she didn't need to look far. Samantha knew Kendra had acted in order to protect her, to protect Ruby from being left on her own, but it still felt as though she shouldn't have let it go down like that. If she was going to be in the field, she had to be ready to… to… She looked to her girl, quietly leaning to her Uncle Jim's side as he held her hand, and she knew her words had been empty. She couldn't have risked it… especially with what John Diggle had sent her.

"We're one step closer," Iris had turned to Cait, sharing quiet and – she hoped – reassuring words. She could just see her sitting there, her hand looking like it wanted to go to rest to where her belly had yet to really start to grow but didn't dare to, like she wanted to present herself as more in control of her current emotions. Cait looked up to her, responding with a small smile.

"I know," she said, although her voice seemed unconvinced. To Iris, now that she heard it, it almost sounded more like she was trying to stop herself from doing something stupid, to remind herself why she shouldn't…

X

It had taken another intervention from Agent Drake before the medics would step back and let them try it their way. Once they'd been able to see what Felicity had seen in Oliver's neck with their own eyes, thanks to an x-ray, they understood what her warning had been about. Initially the object looked like little more than a fine needle, but the closer they came to it, the more they realized it was much more than that. Little by little, the thing seemed to be expanding, like it had been woven together by even thinner strands… and now the strands were separating. Once they did, once they started burrowing in their way…

"Is it… tech?" Thea asked, squinting at the image.

"I think so," Felicity told her. She wouldn't have been able to tell her much more, this wasn't her forte, but then the picture as a whole could only confirm their beliefs. If it had only been a very small needle, what could it have done to him, except maybe to poison him? It wasn't poison. But now with how the thing was unfurling, how could it be anything else? The question remained… what was its purpose?

"I can try and get it out," Moira Queen said then. They turned to look at her. She'd been looking at the image, at her son…

"How?" Felicity asked. Moira held up her hand. It was vibrating.

"Wait, are you sure, you…" Thea stepped up to her, hesitation in her eyes. As much as she knew this was her mother, as much as the last few days had slowly started to bind them together again after all those years apart, Oliver… Oliver had been her entire world, along with Papa Toly, for as long as she could remember. She knew what her mother intended to do. She still struggled with this particular trick, though she knew Oliver could do it well, and to imagine someone reaching into the back of her brother's head, even if it was her…

"I just need to know, will this thing fight back?" Moira only looked back to Felicity. "If I try and pull it away, what will it do?"

"I… I have no idea," she apologized.

"Then find me someone who will know."

The image from the x-ray had been taken to Samantha Arias' room, shown to her and to Laurel Lance both. Thea had explained to them what her mother hoped to do, and she'd asked whether they believed it was the right choice.

"It would be better if you found a way to neutralize it first… just in case," Samantha told her.

"How do I do that?" Thea asked.

"You don't. I will," Laurel told her, excusing herself before following her back to where Oliver and his parents waited. Felicity had been forced to head back out into the city, rejoining Tommy and the others to take on a breacher situation.

It had taken a few minutes more before Laurel could turn to the worried family with some good news. The way was clear. If Moira was going to do her thing, now was the time.

Moira looked to her husband, to her daughter. She looked down to her son's face, brushing gently at his hairline, even as her other hand began to vibrate and went seeking the obtrusive object. Thea couldn't look, and she turned away, her father – in name if nothing else – taking her hand as they waited.

When she heard a very soft clinking sound, Thea turned back. The object, now pulled out of Oliver's neck, looked as harmless as it looked terrifying, like a cross between a needle and a bug.

"Would you mind if I took a look at that?" Laurel asked.

"I'd be happy to see that thing get as far away from us as possible, so yes, by all means," Moira let out a breath, bowing her head to kiss her son's brow.

"Why isn't he waking up?" Thea asked.

"Give him time, sweetheart," Robert squeezed her shoulder. She gave a quick nod before moving to sit next to her brother, as the three Queens waited for the fourth to wake up.

X

These were not the cells where the breachers were locked up if they couldn't be taken back to their quarters right away. Raymond and Nate were on their own, save for their guards. When Raymond had awakened earlier, finding himself as cuffed as his partner, he'd stared back at Nate, wondering what had happened to them. But Nate had been silent, and he still hadn't said a word. They'd both been silent since they'd been put in their respective cells. Maybe they waited for an escape plan… maybe they waited for Vandal to appear and kill them… or something.

When they were visited, it was not by Vandal Savage. It wasn't even by Lily, Jesse, and Lyra, though the thought of those three laughing their heads off hadn't been that much more appealing.

Instead, they were visited by three women. Two of them were strangers. The third, the one in the wheelchair, was very familiar. Raymond and Nate looked at them as they came to a stop, facing the two cells. They still didn't speak. Raymond stole a glance to the wheelchair bound Arias woman, seeing the effects of the shot he'd taken at her. She glared at him.

"You know who I am," she told him, told Nate. They didn't speak. "Did he send you?" They gave her a look. _He who?_ "Julian Albert," she frowned. Raymond and Nate casually looked to one another. Strike one.

"Where is my husband?" one of the other women asked. They looked at her. "Ronnie Raymond. Elongated Man." They chuckled. Plastic guy… They stopped chuckling when they looked back and saw the woman's hands were vibrating. She was a speedster. But then she stopped, one of her hands raising and lowering, like she didn't want them to know…

"Oh, that's right, you two are expecting," Nate gestured to her. "Heard him talking back there. Congratulations," he went on, sounding almost genuinely happy for them.

"Where is he?" she raised her voice, her eyes crackling with energy.

"Cait…" the other woman breathed, putting a hand to her arm, calming her down.

"You're the sister, right?" Raymond nodded to her. "Miss West. You have something of your father in you." Iris turned to look at him now. If he'd wanted to strike her with his words, he had succeeded. Her father really was involved.

"Why would he take Wallace?"

"I didn't say he did," Raymond told her. "I said you looked like him."

"Does your boss know you're here?" Samantha asked. It was a shot in the dark, but she had a feeling it might be the right one, and going by the very small twinge in their faces, maybe it was. "You two screwed up, didn't you?" They didn't reply, choosing to return to the silent treatment.

"Maybe we should put out the word," Iris smirked, an idea coming to her. "Just in case he or she didn't hear. We could get Nora to put out another message… I could even get it patched through Breach." Another twinge. "You two really suck at this, don't you? They're here on Main, aren't they?" They wouldn't give them anything more, but they didn't have to. "Big, giant message, with mug shots… or surveillance videos of how you were caught, and locked up… Some lean days coming up for you two knuckleheads."

Oh, they wanted to reply, they so did, and as small of a victory as it was, they would take it. As they left the holding area, they stopped and looked to one another.

"So are we really putting that message out?" Cait asked, trying to focus and not let her anger take control again.

"Oh, I think we might," Iris nodded.

"His arm was better…" Samantha frowned to herself. They turned to her. "Palmer. Kendra shot him in the arm with an arrow, but it was better now. How?" They hadn't even realized.

"They must have taken him somewhere," Cait shrugged. "But where?" They didn't know, but the way they saw it, if they could find out… maybe it would be just the thing to fix Samantha's leg, too.

X

When Oliver started to wake up, before he had even opened his eyes, he could hear voices. He recognized his sister, and his mother and father… Anatoly, too? And there was another, a woman's. She was telling his parents something about a needle?

"Back with us then?" Anatoly smiled when Oliver did open his eyes, and then the conversation stopped all at once, his parents and his sister crowding in around him.

"Olly…" Thea breathed, taking his hand.

"What happened, where…" he spoke, his voice rough.

"ARGUS headquarters. After the Desert breachers went back to their city, do you remember what happened? Do you remember falling?" Thea asked.

"No, I…" He really didn't remember. He felt sort of tired, but overall not particularly hurt.

"Someone shot you with this," the woman he didn't know stepped up, showing him a small clear box and a strange sort of pronged needle inside it. "Laurel Lance," she introduced herself briefly, and now that she said her name he did know who she was. He'd seen her on the news.

"Nice to meet you," he declared before looking back to the box. "What is that thing?" Laurel let out a breath.

"This is a very strange but sophisticated piece of technology. And when I examined it closer I figured out one thing about it. I know where it came from." He kept staring, waiting for her to go on. "You were there at my building, when it was caught up with that Future Quarter trap. You helped to free us."

"I did."

"This thing," she held up the box again. "This came from Future, too. I'd bet everything on it."

"But where would Desert breachers get Future tech from?" Anatoly asked, sounding like he was trying to keep up with all this Breach Earth talk, which naturally he was. "From someone from Future Quarter, I suppose, but…"

"That part I don't know," Laurel shook her head. "But I'm sure we can find out. Until then the important part is it's not in you anymore, which is probably a good thing, looking at those little prickling ends there," she pointed to the end of the needle. "It was causing a disruption to your system, stopped your speed, stopped… well, you. If it had kept on going, you might have never come back."

"Mom got it out of you with her hand," Thea informed him. "Clearly you got that skill from her. I'm still waiting on my… inheritance," she frowned. Anatoly put his arm around her shoulders and she sighed.

"Am I clear to get out of here?" Oliver looked around, carefully sitting up.

"You should rest," his father stepped toward him.

"It's all hands on deck out there, Dad," he insisted, shaking his head. "Am I in the clear or not?" He wasn't going to stop, not unless he absolutely had to, they could see it. The Queens looked to one another.

"Promise you'll be careful," Moira let out a breath. Oliver got up to his feet and hugged his mother. She returned the gesture with all she had.

"I promise," he told her. He had forgotten how good it felt to hold and be held by her. He had been so much smaller before… and now he was taller than her.

Oliver and Thea left their parents, Anatoly, and Laurel, stepping out into the afternoon air. Oliver took a deep breath of it, his hand absently moving to the back of his neck like he expected something to be back there again.

"You're really okay?" Thea had to ask.

"You tell me," Oliver gave her a smile before taking off at a run. In no time, she was running alongside him.

"Not fair to take off like that," she was smiling, too. It felt good to be back here, just the two of them.

"What happened while I was unconscious, how long…"

"Just a few hours," she told him. "Those two guys who took the reporter, and Cait's husband, and Artemis, they were captured sneaking into headquarters."

"What?" he turned to look at her, both of them stopping.

"I know, it'd almost be funny if not for you being unconscious at the time. Actually, now that you're okay again, it's starting to be funny for real. Except… guess it'll be really funny only once we figure out where those six are being held," she bowed her head like she meant to apologize for being insensitive. "They're not blabbing. Maybe they need to get that Deathstroke guy in there to have a talk with them."

Suddenly they saw something that caught their attention, something all too familiar… another speedster's trail. Looking to each other, they started to run after it, until they caught up to the runner in question. The man saw them and came to a stop.

"Wait, I know you, you're…" Oliver started to say, as the man held out his hand and they shook.

"Slade Wilson," he introduced himself. "One of my teammates from the Waverider has gone to lend support in Silent Quarter, so I've come to take her place. Good to see you on your feet, Mr. Queen. I was told you were down for the count."

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	38. DAY 076 (vol 2, ch 38)

_Day 76 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 38_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

It was all back to dispatching teams of heroes and agents across the city as they were needed now. And as it had been in them to do before the Desert breachers had pulled their attention, 'Team Terrific' did their part, being the voices that reached the heroes, where the agents dispatched the agents. There was Iris, sitting at Patty Spivot's station, with Cait at her side, and Lisa Snart with them again. They knew Laurel Lance was around here somewhere, too, exploring the concept of the modified version of her device and whether it could actually do what they needed it to do.

Ruby and her mother were not here, though if all went well, they should have been back soon…

It had all been going as smoothly as they could hope for it to go, though this only went so far. After everything they'd seen over the last four days, they would look to the maps with a vigilance honed to the chance that they could be hit with another wave of new quarters, or another stand… or another kidnapping. They might have those two guys under lockup, but there were the three meta girls still roaming about, and what was to say that whoever was calling the shots wouldn't pull in some backup?

"Miss West," a man's voice spoke from behind her, and Iris knew who it belonged to before turning to find John Diggle standing a few feet away. Cait and Lisa turned to look at him, too, their eyes widening just a bit; he had that air about him, she guessed, an air that said 'I could probably tear you in two if I tried hard enough.' And still, at the same time, they felt just enough trust coming off of him…

"Did you…" Iris started to ask, but he shook his head.

"Still nothing, but I got your message." They had reached out to him, of course, as soon as they could. They'd told him about how they had identified the two men who'd taken Zari, Ronnie, and Kendra… and they'd told him how they'd been captured. Now here he was, and they knew what he'd ask even before he asked it. "Where are they? I'd like to speak with them."

X

After being visited by Iris, Cait, and Samantha, the two imprisoned breachers had returned to their quiet wait for what they guessed would be another in a line of attempted interrogations. They were trying to make them crack, to make them speak. Well, they could probably try. They would fail, but they could try.

When the door opened again, they didn't bother to look up. They waited until their visitor came into view. It was a man alone, and when they saw him, they went back to ignoring him.

"I thought you might like to see this," Henry Heywood addressed his grandson. Nate didn't look up. "It was the last time you and I met… the only time, actually. You were two years old, couldn't really understand who I was to you, but you were a cheerful little guy, you were happy to meet anyone."

Nate said nothing. Raymond chuckled just a bit, which finally made his partner lift his head and meet his grandfather's look. He only vaguely allowed his eyes to pass over the picture Henry was now holding up for him to see, otherwise ignoring it to stare at him as though to say 'And?'

"After I came here and I found out what had become of you, well…" He let Nate imagine it on his own. He had little hope of causing any kind of response in his grandson, but he'd needed to say something. Now that it was done, the picture was slipped back in his jacket pocket before facing the two prisoners in their respective cells. "Now, normally, we would be sending you on, back to Haven, to let them deal with you and whatever punishment you have coming your way. But that's not going to happen, not now. Right now, I'm going to be keeping the two of you in my sights, and we're going to get to the bottom of things."

"Good luck with that," Nate spoke flatly, moving decisively back into ignoring him. For several seconds, nothing happened. Nate was staring at the ceiling. Raymond was picking at his nails. Though they weren't looking at him, they could imagine Henry was looking at the both of them, at his grandson in particular. Finally, after a minute or so, they heard his footsteps as he retreated and left the holding area.

X

In days of crossing paths here and there with the half of the Waverider's team helping in the effort here on Main, Oliver and Thea had both heard about how they had a speedster with them, currently out on Breach to help in _their_ effort, but they hadn't thought too much of it, not until he showed up to replace Agent Sharpe after she'd gone to help on the other side. Here he was now, this man who very much had this sort of military air about him. It even seemed to show in the way he ran.

"So are you… uh… well, how did you get _your_ speed?" Thea asked Slade Wilson as the three of them went on their way toward a call they'd been sent to respond to.

"It was a lab accident," Slade told the girl, sparing her the details of how it had led to the creation of Project Mercury and the attempt to create more speedsters like him. "How did you get yours?"

"Not sure on the specifics of it, it's just something our people can do apparently…" she shrugged. Slade stared at her. "Oh, we're not human," she declared so casually it made her brother smile. "That's a story for when we're not trying to stop breachers though."

It was sort of strange, to be running on to a scene, three speedsters strong. Not bad strange, just… strange. It made Oliver think about what Thea had asked him a little while back, about whether their parents had ever possibly done anything like this. He'd heard from her how she'd finally seen their mother use her speed earlier, when he'd been unconscious, and then there was of course the way she'd gotten that Future device out of his head. Even then, he still had trouble picturing the two of them doing anything like this.

The three of them working together as a team though, Thea and Slade Wilson and him, he couldn't deny it had been great. It made him think about the _other_ speedster they'd heard about, Cait Snow, though of course he knew there was about no chance she'd run into the field at present time, but he did believe that this could change in the long run. He found it strangely encouraging, to find others who could do what he and his sister could do, regardless of how they'd come by that power.

Of course there was another who stood completely on the other side of this statement. If Malcolm Merlyn was anything, he was the reverse…

X

No matter how hungry they had been getting, neither Raymond nor Nate would have said a thing. They weren't going to appear in any way disturbed by their current state. It was one thing that they had been captured, and in such a pathetic way.

But then, when they did receive some food, slid silently into their respective cells, it was the first time they showed themselves in any way dedicated to some activity beyond lying down on their cots and staring at the ceiling. They got up, got hold of the bags left for them, and returned to their cots, sitting down and looking in to see what they'd been given.

"Looks like someone hit the vending machines," Raymond frowned, pulling out a packaged sandwich, a carton of milk, a bag of chips, and cookies. Nate, for his part, didn't look as though he cared where the food came from. It was food, he was starving, and in no time he was scarfing down the second half of his sandwich.

"What were you expecting, a big tray full of stuff?" he asked. Raymond looked up at him, frowning. He didn't need to be reminded of what might have been the biggest ironic turn of the last few days, now finding themselves the captives instead of the captors. He opened up the bag of chips first, crunching a few of those before opening up the sandwich.

Neither of them was using this 'lunch' time to discuss their current predicament or how they planned to get themselves out of it, though it was about the only thing they could think about. They would have to do _something_. If this took too long, they'd have to start considering some kind of option that involved them relocating to some remote quarter, changing their names… whatever it would take to stay away from Vandal and his buddies. Like that was even possible.

"Trade you my chips for those cookies," Nate held up the bag.

"What is this, the fourth grade?"

"It's cookies, now are you going to give them to me or not?" With a groan, Raymond tossed the cookies through the bars, receiving the chips a moment later. Their guards didn't seem particularly bothered by this, something the partners and childhood friends quietly filed away.

X

Jim and Amaya, each of them left the last standing of their respective teams, had gone back into the city tagging along, for the time being at least, with another sort of hodge podge team built out of Tommy Merlyn, Supergirl, Agent Drake, and Lyla Michaels. From what they'd been hearing, the four of them were still looking for Tommy's father, who was some fugitive and potentially behind some of what had been happening out here.

Right about then, both Jim and Amaya were getting to think it might be something worth looking into joining. Whatever they could do to make this all stop, right?

They'd been sent to handle another case of home invasion. Since the attack on Laurel Lance's building, they'd all been just the slightest bit apprehensive about approaching buildings at times, especially those of them with abilities. Supergirl, not looking forward to dropping out of the sky mid-flight, had made a cautiously low approach. Once they'd confirmed there was no invisible barrier, she'd lifted higher, until she could make one circuit around the house, carefully looking through windows.

"Well?" Killer Frost asked as the blonde landed back next to them.

"No one in sight," Felicity reported. The call they'd received through the police, and through ARGUS, had come from a frantic couple, saying how they had been forced out of their home. The breachers had threatened them and, before they'd known it, they'd found themselves outside a locked door… with their two small children still inside, unbeknownst to the breachers. Had they managed to stay hidden, or had the breachers found them? They didn't know.

By what description the couple had managed to give, they had managed to identify the three breachers as being from Nature Quarter.

"Of all the times for Mike to be out on Breach right now," Jim frowned, looking up at the house. It would have been easy to get the Atom into the house, let him shrink down and in he'd go.

"Well, I can't fit in anyone's pocket, but I might have an idea…" a familiar voice spoke from behind them and they turned to find a sight bordering on miraculous: Samantha Arias, standing on her own two feet and smiling.

"Now, I think it's customary to tell your friends when you develop healing powers," Jim laughed, moving up to hug her.

"No healing involved here, not exactly, just a controlled trip into Fast," she happily returned the embrace. "Got the idea from cold gun guy, and it got Ruby and I a short vacation from… all this. I'd recommend it."

"I might take you up on that," Jim sighed, looking back to the house. "So, idea?"

"They're from Nature, right?" she asked, pulling a sphere from her pocket. "Let's rock their world."

X

Unbeknownst to them, for some time, Raymond and Nate had been under observation. Finally, their observer had made himself known. John Diggle walked into the holding area. What had started out as a cursory look of curiosity from the two in lock up had turned into an apprehensive move to sit up.

"You know who I am then," John came to stop in about the same spot where Henry Heywood had stopped.

"Reputation only," Raymond replied. After that, they didn't say another word. They weren't sure. What was _he_ doing here? Had Vandal sent him here to take care of the problem they'd caused? The man stared at the two of them for a time, and then he spoke again.

"Where are they?" he asked very simply. Raymond and Nate shared a brief look. Oh. _That_ was what he was here about? Was he actually working on the side of heroes? "Let me make something clear here. I don't know what ARGUS has planned for you and I don't care. So we can do this the clean way, or we can do it the other way, and if you don't choose the former, I promise you, there is nowhere you can go that will stop the latter from happening to you. Where is Wallace West? Where is Zari Tomaz? Where is Mag? Where is Ronnie Raymond? Where is Kendra Saunders? Where is Carter Hall?"

Each question, each name seemed to press further, and further, and further, until they could practically feel his hands at their throats. Was it stupidity or faith in the protection that keeping quiet would bring them? They could have told him everything, led him right to where they were holding those six, but that would be defusing one bomb and triggering another in the same breath. Really, it was going to have to come down to who they feared the most, Deathstroke or Vandal Savage.

Nate was the first to move back to lie down, and Raymond did the same a second later. They stared at the ceiling, and they ignored the man boring holes at them.

"Right," John Diggle spoke smoothly. And he left. There was no telling what he had gotten from this meeting, but they couldn't bother themselves over it. They had made their choice, and they were ready to live with it.

X

The Green Arrow and her team had hitched a ride on the jump ship to get them back across the city, at the ready to jump into action. As the five of them had climbed aboard, it was her father at the helm, ready to take them into the sky, and Sara couldn't help but be taken by surprise to find only four of them here now.

"Where's Av… Stargirl?" she asked Leonard Snart.

"Her services were required on Breach Earth," he informed her. "Slade has come over to take her place, he's out there with the other speedsters, from what I've heard. Guess he decided to stretch his legs before joining us."

"What kind of services?"

"Interpretation," Leonard told her, matching it to the SQ sign. "Now, have a seat so we can take off."

Even as they reached the point where Sara and her team were to disembark, leaving the jump ship to move back to its long delayed ferrying duties, a call came in from Iris back at ARGUS, sending both teams to jump into action together; it would save the Waverider team a trip, if nothing else.

When they reached the scene, it brought Iris' urgency into some perspective. It wasn't the first time that an encounter between the people of the city and breachers had led to some bloodshed, but this was an all-out brawl, and there were weapons freely used, leaving some already on the ground, injured but breathing… and others much more immobile than they would like to see.

"Obsidian, if you could?" Leonard turned to the man at his side. The officer had made quick work of destabilizing the fighters, just long enough that the rest of them were able to sweep in, disarming here, subduing there. Between the nine of them, they had put an end to the situation before anyone else could be hurt or killed.

It had taken some time after that to separate the residents and the breachers – from Frozen, they learned – and pack them off to where each side had to go, either on to the jump ship to be returned to their quarter, the walking, the injured, and the dead, or to the police precinct or the hospital here in the city for the rest. The Waverider would handle the former, and the Green Arrow and her team would guard the others until the police and the ambulances could reach them.

"We were only defending our homes," one man glared at them, sitting on the ground. "They attacked us first."

"They will be punished for what they did… and now, so will you," Michael stared down at them, silencing them with ease.

"This goes on too long, the entire city is going to have had enough," Cisco muttered, Sin and Cynthia both turning to him.

"Hate to break it to you, but I think we're already there," Sin replied.

X

The two guards posted in the holding area to look after Raymond and Nate had been as absent and unfazed by any visitors so far as they could get. That changed when a woman emerged from a socket on the wall.

They barely had the time to react, jumping to their feet, as one of them reached for a radio at his belt, while the other reached for the weapon at her hip, before the woman, standing between them, held out her arms and sent electricity coursing through the both of them with an amused grin on her face. When the current stopped, the two guards hit the ground with the heavy surrender of death. Livewire lowered her arms, looking to the two prisoners staring back at her with barely contained shock. For all they'd known of their rivals, they had never seen them as killers… but those two on the ground looked very, very dead.

"What do we have here?" she asked coolly, taking a step toward the two cells. "Hey, fellas… we were starting to get worried," she declared in a coy sort of hush which sounded as genuine as canned laughter. She reached into her pocket, pulling out a small mirror. Soon, she was joined by her two partners. Both Lily and Lyra looked like they'd just been dying to see the two of them in here. When they caught the scent of the electrified bodies, they looked down and spotted the guards. Whether they disapproved of this action or not, they didn't show it, turning back to Raymond and Nate.

"So… how about we get you out of here, does that sound okay?" Lily asked, as Lyra moved to keep watch.

"What's the catch?" Raymond asked.

"No catch," Lily shook her head.

"Did Vandal send you?" Nate asked.

"He did," Jesse informed them. "He told us to 'deal' with you two. He didn't specify how."

"But we're feeling merciful, aren't we?" Lyra looked to the other girls.

"Very merciful. It's just no fun without the competition," Lily told them. "So that's the deal. We get you out of here, no fuss, just one trip inside a mirror, inside an electrical current, and then… business as usual. What do you say?"

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	39. DAY 078 (vol 2, ch 39)

_Day 78 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 39_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

As hectic as things had been in the past few days, to hear an alarm come from inside headquarters was enough to let them all, agent or no, discover a new depth to the stress they'd already been feeling. Were they under attack?

Iris hadn't been able to leave her station, not in that moment, but then somehow she knew it had something to do with Cait. She'd just walked off a couple minutes ago, saying she needed to get something to eat, but… _She's going back to see the guys who took Ronnie._ Iris had wanted to go after her, to talk her out of it, but she couldn't, and when the alarm sounded, a small part of her feared that Cait had unleashed some kind of speedster power on those guys to get them to talk.

Sharing this concern with Lisa Snart, Leonard's sister had gone to find Cait. The very moment Iris had been able to leave her chair, she'd dashed off to see what had happened, only to run into Lisa as she escorted a pale looking Cait Snow to sit somewhere out of the way.

"What happened?" Iris asked. "Did you…"

"They're gone," Lisa informed her. Iris stared at her, at Cait. Oh, had she? "They were busted out. Those girls, the metas," Lisa clarified, and Iris just had the time to breathe a sigh of relief before Lisa delivered the last punch. "The guards were killed." Iris gasped.

"Livewire," Cait finally spoke. "It was her." She looked like she'd been sick, and Iris tried not to think about what it must have looked like back there. It was about more than the sight though, and as Iris understood, she was left to feel some of that fear, too, like Lisa must have done, too.

These were people who had Cait's husband, Lisa's friends… her brother… As dangerous as they'd seemed before, now it felt as though the stakes had been raised to perilous new heights.

"Does the director know?" Iris asked.

"He came, he saw," Cait told her. Lisa had her arm around her shoulders still, and she didn't let go, wouldn't let go, until she stopped feeling like Cait would just keel over without the support.

"I think he blames himself," Lisa added. They were quiet for a moment. "You should go home, take the rest of the day, get some rest," she told Cait. "I'll take you there…"

"No," Cait shook her head. "I'm not going anywhere. I need… I have to help. I just need a minute to… Ruby?" she looked past them and they turned to see the girl, escorted by an agent, was back. She appeared to be looking for them. Iris waved her arm to get her attention, and Ruby spotted them, hurrying toward them.

"You're back, hey… Where's your mom?" Lisa asked, opening up her arms to receive her returning 'niece.'

"She went to find Jim and the others," Ruby reported happily. "Her leg's better, it took a while, in Fast Quarter, but when we came out again it was only a few minutes later. What did I miss?"

They wouldn't have thought having a twelve-year-old hanging around in all this would be called advisable, but Ruby Arias had more than carried her weight, and in moments like these more than ever. Cait had let out a weak sort of laugh, opening her arms to receive the girl next. Ruby had gone to her at once, and Cait held her, closing her eyes, taking the comfort given to her unbeknownst to the giver.

"Something bad happened, didn't it?" she looked up to Iris, confused.

"Yeah," Iris told her, laying a hand atop the girl's head. There was no point covering up.

X

 **IN THE CITY**

With the brawl broken and all parties involved sent off to where they needed to go, the Green Arrow and her team split off from the now four members of the jump ship team. They walked a while, looking around for signs of trouble they might spot themselves before someone back at headquarters had the chance to direct them. In the end, they had found it, as Cisco just barely managed to grab on to the back of Sin's jacket and pull her out of the way of a car speeding past them. With the way it was going, it was a fair assumption that the driver had never driven until this day.

"Are you okay?" Sara looked back to Sin, even as Michael reached to touch her shoulder in a similar need to ensure that she was alright.

"Fine, I'm fine," Sin told them both, trying to shrug off this almost parental look off the two of them even as her voice was shaky with the momentary shock. She only had the time to turn a thankful nod to Cisco before they all heard skidding and then… a crash.

The five of them ran in the direction of the sound, finding the car stopped in the middle of the road, the driver's door wide open. In front of the car, in the street, a teenaged boy crouched over an old man, fretfully trying to help him even as the old man pushed him away. One look at the large, dark visor over the boy's eyes easily pegged him for being out of Dark Quarter, something the old man must have learned, too.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…" the boy was saying, over and over.

"Get away from me!"

"Hey, it's okay," Sara moved up to crouch next to the boy. He startled, looking at her. "Come here," she led him away, as Michael and Cisco went to the old man's aid.

"I-I didn't mean to hit him, there was sweat in my eyes, I moved the visor… It still hurts too much, I… My brother… I was trying to get him to a hospital," he turned back to the car, even as Sin reached in, pulling a boy no older than five, with a visor of his own and a steady cough. "It was supposed to be better here, that's what he said…" the boy told Sara, his voice betraying the likelihood that tears were welling up in his eyes, under the visor.

"Take a breath, it's going to be alright. We'll take you where your brother can be helped, okay?" The boy could only nod. "Iris? Can you put me on with my father?"

"Already called them back to your location," Iris' voice informed her. "Maybe you guys should just stick together."

"Maybe we should," Sara let out a breath, putting a reassuring hand to the boy's shoulder.

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

When the jump ship had arrived, the two boys from Dark had boarded, along with Sara and Sin. The others stayed behind to deal with the old man, who had still not given up on arguing over the breacher who had hit him. The lights had been dimmed, shielding the brothers' eyes so that the older one, who couldn't have been more than thirteen, was able to remove his visor first and then his little brother's. The younger one was presently resting where he'd been since he'd been pulled from the car, in Sin's arms. She looked determined to continue carrying him until he was put in the care of a doctor.

It was not their intent to take advantage of this situation, but after days of coming across stone faced, tight lipped breachers, here was this boy, who hardly looked like he would be 'hardened into the cause,' who needed their help and accepted it gladly. Maybe they'd get some answers just as gladly.

The jump ship had arrived back at headquarters, where Sara and Sin saw to bringing the brothers into the infirmary. The lights were dimmed until it was nearly dark, something the doctor took issue with. Sin had given the man a glare mighty enough that he almost took a step back, until Sara reminded him that these children were from Dark Quarter. With a sigh, he'd made them turn the lights up just a notch before getting to examine the boy.

"We'll be right outside," Sara told the older brother.

"You're leaving?" he asked, looking back to the stranger and his brother.

"No, of course we're not, are we, GA?" Sin smirked, moving back to sit next to the small boy, who had clearly taken a liking to her already. Sara looked to her partner, then to the older boy. She took a seat, and he sat next to her. Well… they were supposed to talk, weren't they?

"There's no one waiting for you back in Dark, is there?" she asked, and he bowed his head. There was no need to even ask, it had been all over him from the moment they'd met him. It reminded her of when she'd met Sin. Another couple of desperate souls… like the girl from War. "Can you tell me how you two got here?" He looked at once hesitant; he wasn't supposed to. "You're safe here," Sara promised him. "No one's going to come after you. Maybe they told you they would, but I'm telling you right now, that is not going to happen, okay? I won't let them. You made it. You got him to safety," she nodded to the little brother.

The older boy looked to the younger one, too, the concept that they might actually be safe again seeming so impossible. But he looked to Sara like he really wanted to believe. Turning away from the doctor, she reached inside her hood, pulling away her mask at least, so he could look at her like a person.

"He said he'd help us get here, and he'd give us the visors so our eyes wouldn't hurt, a-and a little money. And he did. We got here a few days ago." Sara was surprised by this, or maybe a little concerned, thinking of a thirteen-year-old and a five-year-old on their own for this long. It made her think about those early weeks after she'd been thrown into Haven.

"Where have you been staying?"

"In a cave… they're the same like where we're from, except the green man doesn't live here." Sara smiled. The green man. He was one of those helping on Breach, she knew that much. "But then I ran out of money, and he got sick," the boy looked to his brother. "The man said we were supposed to make trouble, and I tried… I did… but I never got around to it, I just stayed with him, or I got food at night. Then I took the car, I thought… that's trouble… I didn't mean to hit the man."

"I know you didn't," Sara promised him. "This man, the one who told you to come here, what did he look like?" There was no point asking his name, with the way the boy kept referring to him as 'the man,' like he didn't know.

"He had dark hair, long, and on his face. He talked funny." Sara reached for her phone, pulling up an image Iris had sent around. She showed it to the boy, and he nodded.

"Okay," she put it away again. "Did he tell you anything else?"

X

When Slade had gotten a call from his team, asking if he might rejoin them, Oliver and Thea had accompanied him back to headquarters. It wasn't as though they would have difficulty hurrying back out again if needed, and they were as curious about this artificially made speedster as _he_ was about these alien born speedsters.

Upon their arrival, they had found Leonard, Lucy, Ed, and Quentin. Though all four looked grim, Lucy in particular looked shaken. When Slade asked what had happened, if the rest of the team out on Breach had run into trouble, he'd been assured that the team was fine. It was about those two men out of Haven, the kidnappers. They'd been captured, but then the other kidnappers, the girls, had broken them out. Two agents had been killed, one of them a friend of Lucy's.

There was little they could say or do to make any of this better. And when he found out just how the agents had been killed, Slade knew just as they did that it had been Jesse Wells' doing… Livewire… But _he_ also thought of her father, back at Stein Labs. He'd have to be told.

Harry was a friend, an ally of the Waverider's team. They'd already heard of his troubles with his daughter, but this… this was beyond anything he'd had to deal with, and it would just break him. Slade now found himself in the position of having to decide what was more important, to tell the man about what his daughter had done, or making sure he didn't find out until this was over… because they needed him focused and working.

X

Samantha was glad to be back out there, helping, she was. With everything still happening as it was, she couldn't stand being forced to lie back after her leg had been shot with that cold gun… She still remembered it like it was yesterday, or this morning… It _had_ been this morning, it was still the same day… just not to her. To her, to Ruby, it had been weeks ago, weeks the two of them had spent in Fast Quarter, recuperating at the outpost. It was still hard to explain, this time difference. They had been gone _minutes_ as far as anyone knew here.

The struggle happening back on Main was still very present in her mind, in Ruby's. It was in the minds of the people of Fast, too. To them, struggles happening outside their quarter, if they ever heard of them, dragged on at a snail's pace, no new developments coming for months, for years, and when they did come, most times, they were very minimal ones, like reading a book and taking two years to get to the next page…

But she was back now, and jumping back into action like no time had passed, because it really hadn't passed. Jim, all of them, they were still just getting back out there after the end of the stand. Their friends were still missing.

Her first call back out in the city had ended as well as she could hope it to end. The children had been found, safely returned to their parents, and the breachers had been packed up in Jim's van and driven back to headquarters. And then… then that brief time away got to feel like it had been much longer than it had really been, as she learned of Raymond Palmer and Nathaniel Heywood's escape, busted out of ARGUS by those meta girls, at the cost of two agents' lives.

They were back out there now, and she wouldn't get to know for sure. She wouldn't know about the connection to Julian, wouldn't know if Ruby was really in danger… Her daughter was back here, with Lisa, with Cait, and Iris, and Laurel Lance… Team Terrific they'd gotten to call themselves, thanks to Ruby, who insisted that Samantha was as much a part of that team as the rest of them, that she was their representative in the field… Miss Terrific, or something. Well, if that was to be her name, then she'd do her best to live up to it.

X

Stepping out of the infirmary to try and find the jump ship's team – after promising her young new friend she'd come back to see him – Sara slipped her mask back over her eyes as she scanned around, seeking a familiar face. Well, she found a few of those in the process. It seemed as though after returning into the field, most of the heroes she'd been collaborating with over the past few days were in headquarters again… maybe that was just as well. They'd need to hear what the boy had told her, too.

"Iris?" she stopped and turned toward her when she spotted the one who'd come from Haven along with the Queens.

"Yes?" Iris looked up, surprised to see her there.

"Is there a… conference room, a cafeteria, somewhere we could gather up some people?"

"Sure, yeah, over there," she pointed to a door.

"Good, then get your people here, Wild Dog and his people, Killer Frost, the speedsters…" Sara spoke as she moved off to catch up to her father when she spotted him and his team, looking like they were on their way out.

"Got it," Iris sped off, too.

It was a few minutes before they were all gathered and waiting. Michael, Cisco and Cynthia had finally arrived from dealing with the old man, Tommy Merlyn and his team were here, too… They were all waiting to hear what was so important that they needed to be held back.

"Thank you for coming, I'll make this quick," Sara addressed them all. They would all need to go back out there, despite what she was about to tell them. "We just brought in a young breacher and his brother, both out of Dark Quarter. Like many, many others, they were recruited to cross on to Main Earth and 'make trouble' over these past few days. I'm sure all of you have done what you could to get some of them to talk, to tell you how they ended up here, and why. Like us, I'm guessing, you've gotten very little out of them, if anything."

There were nods all around. They looked at her now with the same easy question in their eyes. Had this changed? Had these boys spoken?

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	40. DAY 080 (vol 2, ch 40)

_Day 80 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 40_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH  
** **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

Looking around the room, Sara could see the faces of people who had been pushing and pushing, doing the best they could to protect the city, to protect both this Earth and the other, some of them… in some ways, all of them affected by the fear brought on by their people going missing. She looked at them all and it really seemed like they were on the verge of finding what it had all been for.

"I think we've all gotten to the point where we've started to consider the big picture, whether or not we can see it yet. We've all been thinking about it, whenever we've had the chance, which hasn't been often, with how it's all been going." There was grumbling and nodding around her. "So, let's just take the time, as… brief as we can make it," Sara added, thinking of what might be happening out there while they were all in here.

"My father," Tommy started.

"And mine," Iris sighed.

"And… Ruby's," Samantha spoke up, her face sinking under the admission, which she never would have made, had she not known her daughter was somewhere else, with Lisa.

This caught everyone's attention. Only Cait knew about this discovery. Jim Olsen, sitting next to his friend and teammate, looked to Samantha with immediate concern.

As best she could without laying out her entire story, she explained how, when Kendra had been taken and she'd been injured, the guys had inadvertently tipped their hand in bringing up Ruby, which had led Cait to recall what Iris had told her about the unidentified men John Diggle had seen, meeting with Malcolm Merlyn and Joseph West. One of them, they had come to identify as Julian Albert, Samantha's ex and Ruby's father.

"All that's been happening, here and on Breach, it's all been them," Iris let out a breath. She was sure of it, they'd _all_ realized it long ago, one way or the other, though not all of them had the same information at their disposal.

"What about the other two?" Felicity asked.

"One… we don't have a name on him, only a description I was able to give, to generate this sketch," Iris pulled up the image and showed it around. "Have any of you seen him before?" She couldn't help but look to the Waverider team in particular. If they had hopes of identifying a breacher…

"Never seen him, but he's got that kind of…" Lucy squinted at the picture, trying to pin down the impression she was getting.

"Future," Slade nodded. Lucy agreed at once, as did the others. He definitely reminded them of the people they'd seen in Future, the sketch, Iris' memory, whatever it was… they had captured it perfectly.

"So that makes four, the last… No one's seen him but Deathstroke, and never clearly enough to identify him beyond 'tall' and 'black,'" Tommy went on.

"Whoever he is, he has to be from War," Slade told him.

"Why's that?" Sara asked, and he turned to her.

"Because for all that happened back there, it had to be orchestrated by someone who knew it enough to know where to hit, know where it would hurt. It had to be someone who'd hate it enough to want to watch it and all its people… burn…" His voice had cut off so suddenly, like the thought that came to him had revealed itself at blindsiding speed. Whatever he'd thought… it couldn't be, not possible…

"Slade?" Ed Thawne looked to his teammate.

"I told you, didn't I?" he looked to Ed, to Quentin, and Leonard, and Lucy. "I told you he wasn't dead." Now _they_ understood… now _they_ looked stricken. This wasn't good… this was really not good at all.

"Who is it?" Tommy asked what the entire room wanted to know.

"Many in War would believe the name only a figurehead, because for how long our conflict has been going on, it just wouldn't be possible for one person to have been behind it all along. They would have you believe 'the Enemy' had only ever been whoever led their forces at one time or another, and maybe for the sake of appearances it has been like that. But those who know better, those of us who are not satisfied with clinging to the possible, we know… the Enemy lives, because he just won't die."

If Slade's intent had been to weave fear into them, he had done it well.

"You've seen him before, haven't you?" Sara guessed, looking from Slade over to her father.

"A few times, yes," Quentin confirmed. "The last time… he died… or we thought he did."

"Malcolm Merlyn, Joseph West, Julian Albert, Future man, and the Enemy…" Leonard Snart counted off the roster of five. "How does that even happen?"

"It has to start somewhere, from someone. If you ask me, I'll give you one guess," Tommy sat back in his chair, as though it would make the entire thing feel like less of a nightmare.

"Our fathers have known each other a long time, and this guy, whoever he is, has been in their circle for a while, too," Iris nodded to the sketch. "I can't speak for how long they've known the others." Tommy shook his head; he couldn't say either.

"Samantha?" Jim asked her, the rest of the question went without asking. _Have you ever seen or heard of those guys?_

"Whatever Julian was doing, I haven't seen or heard from him in over a decade, and even then… I never knew enough to know, I…" She sighed, pulling out her phone. "Deathstroke went to his house, after we told him about Julian. There's… there's a kid's room in it, made for a girl of Ruby's age. And then there's this…" she showed the image of the row of picture frames, showing the same child from one year to the next, showing Ruby Arias from infancy to her present of twelve years.

"Hey… He won't get near her, okay?" Jim promised the visibly shaken mother.

"However he got involved, he had to be in it for something," Amaya stated.

"For four days they've had us running around, trying to keep up with everything they've been throwing at us," Sara started again. "There had to be a reason, a goal."

"They're looking for something," Cait spoke her long-standing suspicion. It was widely accepted and shared. "All of them."

"Quid pro quo?" Oliver guessed.

"I just got a really creepy version of the Wizard of Oz playing in my head now…" Sin muttered. Michael looked at her. "This one needs a heart, that one needs a brain…" she explained. He considered this, his face showing how he might not have put it _that_ way, but overall he did more or less get what she was getting at.

"What's in it for them," he said, and she nodded. The others were left to consider it, too.

"He's not getting my daughter," Samantha shook her head determinedly, thinking of Julian, of the things John had seen in his house.

"He's not," Cait agreed, "But… if that was the thing to get him sold on the mission, well… he could have found an easier way to get to her before now, couldn't he?"

"What are you saying?" Samantha asked, turning to her.

"Well… what else could they entice him with?" She knew Samantha would have trouble to look past the possibility that her child was being targeted, but it had to be asked. "I know it's been years, but…"

"Magic." The word came from her like she'd been rummaging through memories, and after pushing some of them away… there it was, underneath, dusty…

"Magic?" Cisco repeated upon hearing it. "What kind of magic?" he asked, a bad feeling of his own now creeping up his spine.

"He heard about this thing, like… an idol of some kind," Samantha shook her head, clasping at the memory. Cisco looked around, to Sara, and Michael, and Sin, and Cynthia.

"What is it?" Quentin looked to his daughter.

"The museum… the robbery," she reminded him, stealing a look to Agent Drake, who had – briefly – gotten them off the hook for letting breachers get away with an item from their collection.

"They have it, they have the idol," Cynthia told Samantha, and it did nothing to calm her worries.

"So that's him sorted," Slade tried to be as apologetic as he was frank. "And the Enemy is getting his, with the chaos in our city. Who knows what that Future man wants, that leaves you two and your fathers," he looked to Tommy and Iris, who looked the slightest bit cornered. Deep down they didn't want to have to face what their fathers might have been after, like it would be one more blow out of them… But they knew, Iris more than ever.

"He wants his son… Wallace… and now he has him, doesn't he?"

Tommy wouldn't have known what to say until a few days ago. But since all this had started, he had discovered more than he cared to about who his father was, beyond the disappointments he'd already rained on him over his life. His eyes went to Thea… his sister. Did he want her? His daughter… the heir to his abilities he hadn't gotten from his son? Thea seemed to sense the look on her, the meaning behind it.

"Ditch his hunters?" he shrugged then, nodding off to Supergirl. "Don't ask me how…"

"So, say they want all that, and they decide to team up, pool resources, and ideas, and this is what we get," Sara carried on. "Here on Main Earth, we have breachers coming at us from quarter after quarter, so many, too many, enough to keep us all firing on all sides, because what else are we going to do, let them take the city? It ties _us_ up, and even the quarters on the other side, trying to keep track of their people, dealing with the returnees…

"And then while all this is happening, while the outposts are left scrambling to control activity in their quarters, there's this weapon, and even before we know if it's real, the very _idea_ of it is enough to have the cavalry pull their horses together. It's a race against time, there's no ignoring it, especially after they learn it _is_ real, very real.

"And in case they got to think like they had it under control, they take it out of War, and they go and hit Haven… and then it could be anywhere, couldn't it? So, again, we have to sound the alarm across the quarters, and we're all scrambling to make sure no one else dies like those victims in War, and in Haven. They have Silent under siege now, don't they?"

"They take our people…" Cait spoke quietly, and there were quiet nods all around. "Pull and divide our focus. They've been doing it all this time."

"So, what have they been pulling our focus away from?" Sara came around to the point she'd been coming around to make. "It comes off likes a specific plan in some places more than others, but even the parts that look random on the surface, underneath there's still a plan, a-a pattern. If we're being moved around like pawns, then the obstacles have to come in consequence. You need something here, you turn eyes that way…" she gestured as though moving chess pieces across the table in front of her.

"Every time someone was taken, every time there was a hit of that weapon, the War breachers and the Desert breachers…" Felicity counted off.

"One batch of quarters coming through and then a different one, like they're expanding their grid…" Agent Drake added.

"If they keep this up, we're in for a new one before long," Agent Lane agreed.

"Or not," Sara finally came around to the point she'd been waiting to reach. "The boy from Dark, he told me his quarter's people were being pulled back."

"Pulled back how?" her father asked.

"They were supposed do their best to stay here and do what they've been doing, but then there would be a signal, and when that signal came, it was time to cross back home. He was ignoring the signal, trying to get his brother to a doctor, that's when we found him."

"Are they _all_ getting pulled back?" Leonard asked. After four days of ferrying duties, he was looking forward to even a single day off.

"No idea," Sara shook her head. "Every quarter might have its own signal to follow. But if one quarter's already pulled back, it could be a good sign… or it means that whatever this has all been leading to… they're getting close. So, somehow, we need to get in front of this, of them. We need to find Malcolm Merlyn and his team."

"Happy to. Now how do you suggest we do that?" Tommy asked her.

"Look at the patterns," Iris sat up. "Oh… I can do that, just let me…" she sprang up from her chair. "I might not be able to give you any specifics, but I can maybe narrow it down to a few… Just carry on here, figure out a plan, I'll be back." And she was off, leaving the others to look back to one another. A plan… they needed a plan.

Much as they'd had to do in War, they were going to have to split off. Their troubles here in the city weren't going to taper off to allow them to go and attempt to find Merlyn and West and the rest of them. Some would have to stay behind, to keep lending support to ARGUS and the police, while the others went following whatever trail Iris was creating for them. After what they'd all come to discuss together, the idea of more division was not something they felt good about, but it was just as it had always been… they had no other choice.

"I'm staying here," Jim declared, his voice making it clear he intended to keep protecting his city.

"Me, too," Samantha joined him. There was a part of her that already felt torn about letting her daughter anywhere out of her sight, but she couldn't just sit back and do nothing when she was needed out there.

"I'm with you," Amaya told them. Maybe it went back to those memories of the night she had become Killer Frost, but she needed to keep pushing those breachers back.

"I'll be here," Cait breathed out. It would get easier when things went back to normal, wouldn't it? Or would she keep feeling like she was letting people down by sitting out?

"As I will," Laurel spoke. She had been sitting quietly, really, the entire time, watching her sister, her father, all the rest of these people… She had taken in this world she was only really getting to discover, seeing her sister in the middle of it, at the head of it… and she felt as privileged for getting to see this side of her life as she remembered all this time where she'd been living two lives right under her eyes.

"So, who's going out looking for my dad with me?" Tommy looked around. There was no question that Felicity, Dinah, and Lyla would be returning to the Merlyn search with him, but then there was the rest of them…

"I will," Sara nodded, turning to look to Michael. He stood up.

"So will I," he confirmed, and Sara tipped her head to him.

"If it's alright, I think I'll stick around here, hold down the fort," Sin told them before turning to Cisco and Cynthia. "What about you two? Ready to knock back a few more breachers?"

"That's what I'm here to do," Cynthia told her.

"I'm in," Cisco nodded, and Sin bit back a chuckle; of course, he was in if _she_ was.

"You should stay here," Oliver quietly told his sister.

"Wait, so you're going but I can't?" Thea frowned at once.

"If we do find Merlyn, the last thing I want is to have him anywhere near you… Please?" There it was, the big brother card… He knew she wouldn't be able to beat that one, not in a situation like this.

"Fine," she sighed. "But who's going to keep up with me out there?"

"I might, if you'll have me?" She turned to find Slade Wilson giving her an encouraging smile.

"Are you going to tell me not to do something _you_ would do?" she asked him.

"I might," he admitted.

"Business as usual then. Welcome to the team," she shook his hand before turning back to her brother. "Now _you_ … Don't do anything you wouldn't want me to do, and come back in one piece, okay?" Oliver laughed, hugging his sister.

"I make no promises on the former."

"Ed and I will stick around here, too," Quentin told Leonard. As much as he wanted to follow his daughter out there, something told him he would be opening up the possibility of either one of them being used to force the other's hand, and he wanted to remove that. Besides, the two of them felt they needed to back up their fellow officers. This would turn out to be a similar reasoning to Lucy's, when _she_ told them she also intended to stay behind. She was still thinking of her friend who had died guarding Palmer and Heywood… She needed to be here.

With that, it became that the jump ship would soon sail off, carrying Leonard, Sara, Michael, Oliver, Tommy, Felicity, Dinah, and Lyla. But first they needed Iris to come through for them. And she did.

"I'll spare you the details, but going off of what happened before, and what happened at the same time elsewhere, this is the best I could come up with. I'll be with you while you're out there," she told them, gesturing to her ear.

She didn't want to bring up the realization she'd had while she worked, telling her that whatever Merlyn and the others were up to, if they were ever going to be found doing anything, then it would mean somewhere something was about to happen. An attack here, or another kidnapping, or maybe Silent Quarter would be hit… But she didn't have to; it would be all they could think about.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	41. DAY 082 (vol 2, ch 41)

_Day 82 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 41_

 **BREACH EARTH, HAVEN QUARTER**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **HOME OF HARRISON WELLS**

They were free to cross into the quarter again. Vandal had not said anything else, only that they were no longer prohibited. As far as they were concerned, they didn't need anything else… for now. In the long run, when this was all over, they might need to have a word or two with the Future man. Right now, three of them had some things – some people – to look in on. Their partnership had in no way been intended or sought out, but now here they were, a team of five.

With Jesse's father being off in War Quarter, it granted her and her teammates a place where they could gather inconspicuously, to collect their thoughts, maybe compare notes… They were on the edge with Vandal after that fiasco at ARGUS headquarters, and the easiest way to move themselves back to a safe distance would be to get the other part of their job to a satisfactory and prompt end.

"Kitchen?" Raymond asked, even as they were stepping through the breach that took them into the living room. Jesse rolled her eyes but motioned in the direction of the room in question.

"Help yourselves," she told him, even as Lyra sped off ahead of him, laughing at his reaction. Lily sat on a couch, while Nate slowly walked around the room, looking to the shelves of books, the pictures on the mantle.

"Who's that?" he asked, pointing to a small girl who looked nothing like her.

"That's me," Jesse informed him. He frowned, looking back at her. Was she pranking them? Was this really her father's house. "What, it took me a while to settle on this face," she shrugged. Now he stared at her like he wasn't following.

"I don't think he knows," Lily pointed out.

"Know what?" Nate asked, even as Jesse shifted into from her human appearance into her true form. Nate responded with a bit of a startled step before brushing it off to try and look as unfazed as possible. "So, you're an alien…"

"Surprise," she waved her hands with a grin as she returned to the form of Jesse Wells.

When Raymond and Lyra returned, each carrying a fair load of food, they took in the awkward silence hanging in the air and looked to the three of them.

"What did we miss?" Raymond asked, biting into the sandwich he'd made himself.

"Alien," Nate pointed to Jesse.

"Well you don't have to point like that, it's rude," Lyra tossed him an apple. "By the way, is your father a health nut or something? The pickings were _slim_ …" she reported, moving to sit next to Lily, who grabbed one of the water bottes she'd brought in.

"He always wanted us to eat well after we got here, like I'd get sick again if we didn't," Jesse explained. The story really should have annoyed her, but really it made her think back to those old times, the two of them in this house… She wiped off the smile that threatened to creep over face. "But we're not here to talk about my childhood, so… What do we do now?" she asked, moving to lean over the couch and grab one of the sandwiches Lyra had made.

"We're actually going to do it this time?" Nate asked. "Because the last time we tried it…"

"You were no better than us," Lily cut him off. "But yes," she told him and Raymond both. "We promise to be the picture of cooperation if you will, too." As a show of this, both Lyra and Jesse raised their hands as though swearing an oath.

"We've ruled out Haven," Raymond informed them, as his way of giving his own oath.

"Us, too," Lyra told him. "And War," she added, looking to Lily. This was her city, she'd known it better than any of them, and she had been immediately certain that they wouldn't find what they were seeking out there.

"Underground feels like a solid candidate, but it's hard to look into," Lily admitted.

"We haven't been able to get in either," Nate revealed.

"Then there's Mist, of course," Jesse nodded along, rolling through the quarters they'd visited over the past four days. "Not sure about Fast… or Slow either, I guess."

"Nature might be a good one," Raymond threw in. "What about Silent?"

"Could be," Lyra shrugged. "Frozen or Desert might be good. What about Floated and Weighted?"

"Backup list, I guess," Lily sighed. "Top five. Underground, Mist, Silent, Nature, and… Future."

"Sounds good to me," Nate agreed. "We focus on those, we might be getting somewhere."

"But we stick together," Lily stood up. "It's easy to say five quarters, five of us, let's split up, but I think that would be a mistake. So, in or out?"

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

 **SOMEWHERE…**

However long Ronnie would need to charge the object they'd gotten off Lily Stein, if that was indeed how it worked, it hadn't taken then long to know that the odds were Vandal would come back before enough time had gone by. So, much as it pained them to have to stay in here any longer than they needed to, they moved to sit and play with the deck of cards in the middle of the room, allowing Ronnie and the device to remain exactly where they needed to be, allowing the charge.

He would only watch them, same as Mag would. He needed to concentrate on feeling out if his power had returned to him, all the while focusing on preventing his body from stretching or changing in any way that would give away the fact that he even could.

Kendra had been participating in the game, with Carter, and Zari, and Wallace, but she couldn't seem to ignore what Mag had told her in passing earlier. After a while, maybe because it gave them something to talk about, to make the time go by faster, or maybe because she couldn't help it anymore, she'd turned to look at Mag.

"What you said before… What did you mean?" Mag looked at her, knowing easily what she was referring to but at the same time perplexed by the complete cluelessness in her eyes.

"Where were you born?" she asked. Kendra frowned. "What quarter?"

"I… I'm not from the Breach," she insisted, not upset. "I've never even been…"

"Are you sure about that?" Mag leaned in, and Kendra had the distinctive impression she was being given a good whiff. It would have been weirder if the question didn't raise a number of questions in her, because, really, now that she'd been asked… she really _wasn't_ sure. After a moment, she closed her eyes, then opened them again.

"Sometimes I have these dreams… a girl, running through the woods, with a bow and arrow. That's how I became Artemis, I just couldn't get her out of my head…" She closed her eyes again, the dream, the… the memory… She let out a breath, a smile swirled with understanding and sadness blooming on to her face. "It's not a dream, is it? The girl was me… in Nature Quarter. But how can I not remember, the girl in my dream was… eight or nine, I… I remember my childhood, I was on Main back then, I…"

"Maybe you just remember it differently. Your time in Nature may have been too long ago for you to remember it well enough, but some of it stayed with you and you matched it to something you remember better," Mag suggested.

"Are your parents…" Carter asked Kendra, sitting across from her.

"They're on Main," she nodded. And they had some explaining to do… if she ever got out of here.

The game carried on after this, the conversation left to dissipate, leaving Kendra to process this new information quietly. Mag went back to feeling for Vandal's departure. He was still there, a presence so strong it could not be missed in any way. If he left, she would just know… and he was still there. She was really getting to despise that feeling he gave her. If she could just punch him right in the face before this was over, just once… That would make this entire captivity thing worth it.

She had been lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling, at the dampener, for a little over what she'd counted out to be ten minutes when she felt the release, the disappearance of his scent… Vandal had left again, it was time.

"Gather up the cards, they might come in handy," she told the playing quartet as she moved to stand. "Plastic man, are you good and loose?"

"It's Elongat… Never mind," Ronnie frowned, not so much standing as allowing his legs to lift his upper body off the ground, right up to the grill in the ceiling. He breathed out and laughed. "Never so happy to be able to do that," he looked down to the five on the ground.

But then when he looked back up to the ceiling, it _wasn't_ just over his head anymore. It was several feet above him.

"What?" he stretched up to meet it again, but it refused to be caught, just grew out over and over. "How is that even possible, I felt it with my hand…"

"It's not real, it's playing with our heads, remember?" Zari shouted up. "Come back down!"

Begrudgingly, he did as he was told. When he was his normal height again, he looked back up and found the ceiling was at the same height it had been before he'd stretched up to meet it.

"Thought of everything, didn't he?" Ronnie groaned with frustration.

"Well, I have a few ideas about that," Mag moved to the wall. As they'd seen her do before, she took to throwing punches at the wall, in particular at the sort of glass like seams. The way she was going at it now, it made them think she'd been holding back before.

As she pounded away at that one point, over and over, after a while her hits would be punctuated by a sort of flickering and expanding flash of light that ran the length of those seams. And then there was a _crack_ , and with another punch, Mag was propelled away from the wall and into the receiving arms of Carter and Kendra, who set her back on to her feet and looked around the room with her.

"Fighting back… Why can't you just be a room?" she heaved.

If this place was fighting back, then it was wounded. Mag's hits had broken something, they could see it… They could see it because everything was just sort of flickering. Whatever was or wasn't real, they would see one thing and another, like the illusion was blinking out of existence but wouldn't quite give up the ghost, wouldn't stop keeping what lay underneath in shadows. But the shadows were lightening…

"There, look," Wallace pointed, and they all looked as it became more evident… a door. The way out.

"What happens if we touch the handle right now?" Zari wondered aloud.

"Honestly, right now, I wouldn't," Ronnie frowned at the blinking walls.

They all stood there, the six of them captives, in the middle of the room, just… waiting to see what would happen next. What if this never stopped, what if they came back and…

"And there's the peep show window," Zari stared up as something else of the real makeup of the room showed itself. There was a large window, as though the entire upper floor of this place had the one wall that was a window looking into the room below. There was no one in it now, but they could just see the tops of chairs, maybe a table… lamps… "Cozy…"

" _That's_ going to be our way out," Mag pointed at it like a player calling a shot. "I have an idea…"

"Are we going to like it?" Wallace asked.

"Debatable," Mag estimated.

But they couldn't do anything until the walls stopped doing what they were doing, or at least they didn't think it would have been wise to try it. As a test, Carter had taken one of the playing cards and flicked it at the wall.

It burned on impact.

"So, we are _not_ touching the wall," Ronnie declared.

"Really not touching the wall," Zari breathed.

It took nearly what they could have counted to be about eight minutes before the surroundings they'd become accustomed to over the past four days had winked out to the point where they were nearly sure it was over. Still, they let a few more minutes go by before another card was sacrificed to the cause.

It tapped to the wall before fluttering to the ground unharmed.

"So, this is where we've been all this time," Wallace looked around. The room was bare, nothing in it but the door and the window into the other room above. Even their toilet was gone, which really would come to baffle them in days and weeks to come. But not now. Right now, the one and only thing on their mind was getting out of here before anyone else returned.

"How about that idea of yours?" Ronnie looked to Mag.

"Maybe you should go take a peek up there first," Zari suggested. He nodded, stretching his legs out again until he could see into the room.

"No one there, nothing to write home about."

"What about the glass?" Mag inquired. He knocked at it with his knuckles.

"Sounds a bit thick."

"Really thick?"

"More like high rise, less like an aquarium."

"Oh… Then that's good!" Mag sounded at once optimistic.

"You're going to punch it?" Carter assumed.

"Oh, no, that'd be too complicated, glass raining everywhere, no…" Mag told him, as Ronnie stretched back down to the ground. She pointed at him. "He's going to throw me at it like a boulder."

Ronnie stared at her, blinking. Was she serious?

"Can you work to a good winding up?" Mag asked him, like this was the most natural course of action.

"Maybe? But what if it doesn't work and you just…" He punched one of his hands against the other and made it flatten out against his palm. As a visual, it was effective, and a bit frightening for the others. Mag wasn't thrown.

"Then you throw me again. The sooner this is over, we get you back to your wife and your baby to be." It was the best motivator she could give him. She was aware of the risks, clearly, and he'd seen for himself what she could do…

"The rest of you, back up as much as you can."

"You can't be serious," Zari shook her head.

"I think it's our one shot," Carter chimed in, and they looked to him. "If this was me, I'd tell myself that if by some miracle the captives did find the door, they'd throw themselves at it as their way out. So, I'd throw some tricks on there, too. But the window…"

They'd gotten this far. Could they really get caught up on what might happen instead of giving their escape a solid chance?

So, they moved into position to give it a try. Zari, Wallace, Carter, and Kendra all moved to the opposite wall, as far from the window as they could realistically get. As they did this, Ronnie looked around the room, making some calculations in his head about how to generate the force he would need in order to send Mag hurtling at that window. He couldn't remind himself he was about to throw a living person at a plate of glass. He really couldn't let himself think about it.

Mag, for her part, was only thinking of that. But where he thought about it with apprehension, she considered the best way to position herself, to hit the window and ensure it would break and set them on their way to escape. She couldn't let them down. She might not have had anyone to get back to, but they all did.

"Are you ready?" she asked Ronnie. He looked back at her like he was terrified. "That is not going to help. Think about it like a story you'll get to tell your son or daughter some day."

"You're going to give my kid nightmares," he shook his head, but then getting to say 'my kid' made him smile again. He had to hold on to that. "Let's do it before I chicken out again."

He shook out his arms, which in this case was about as literal as it got. His arms got long, and his face scrunched up as he picked her up. She'd gotten down on the ground and made herself as small as possible… compact. He snatched her up and started turning, and turning, swinging her around. It would have been funny if it wasn't so freaky looking.

"Can't look…" Zari cringed, shutting her eyes and turning her head away. The others got to thinking she had the right idea of it, so that in the end they all had their heads turned away, and none of them saw the release.

But finally Ronnie _did_ let go, and even as he did he expanded like a blanket and stood in front of them, to shield them in case the glass went the wrong way, which would have been the least surprising thing in this room.

When they heard the sound of glass shattering, it took several seconds before they dared to look up, before Ronnie's shape started to shrink back to normal and he turned around. As they watched, they saw Mag crouched on the floor in the room above, picking herself up until she was sitting and she could turn to look at them.

"No sweat…" she breathed. "Now, you better get up here quick before that room gets any ideas."

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	42. DAY 084 (vol 2, ch 42)

_Day 84 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 42_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **THE BREACH SHIP WAVERIDER'S JUMP SHIP**

With the list they had received, compiled in a swift bit of work by Iris West, the small crew boarded the jump ship, preparing to embark on a new mission which would not only take them away from the constant cycle of breacher tracking and returning of the last four days. If they played their cards right, they could actually put an end to this, allow their city to find a normal pace of life again. All they had to do was find Malcolm Merlyn.

Right about now, it felt impossible. It had become very clear that the man had a skill for hiding himself. It he wanted you to be able to find him, you would find him, but if he didn't…

If that was the case, then what was to say that they weren't being led around now? Malcolm and his team had always been one step ahead, it seemed, so much so that none of them knew how to be sure anymore, to know whether the strides they were making were by their own cleverness… or if they were playing right in the hands of their opponents once again.

They couldn't possibly have accounted for every variant, could they? With so many of them, so many minds combined in ways they had never been combined… There was no way to know everything they would choose to do, down to the last. So why did it still feel like they could?

"What's he like?" Oliver asked Tommy as they sat across from one another. The one calling himself Guardian looked up. "Your father."

"My father… and our sister's father," Tommy shared a look with Oliver. The Flash took a breath but said nothing. He was still getting used to the idea of their connection, too. "Sometimes it feels like he had to be more than one person, like he couldn't possibly have been the same guy I grew up with, but… no… He was always the same guy, only the before and after all hinged on one thing, one moment. And when it became clear, to him, that the moment wouldn't come, then… the veil fell and I saw who he had always been."

"When you didn't get your speed," Oliver guessed, and Tommy nodded.

"I wasn't what he had been waiting for. He wanted a legacy, to pass on his ways. He believed himself above everything and everyone. He came to Earth, I think, because the world he'd come from didn't give him a challenge anymore. He wanted to go somewhere and live in the knowledge of his superiority."

The others listened as he spoke, taking in this portrait of the man they sought. It wasn't as though Tommy had been attempting to keep quiet, to reserve these words for Oliver alone. Felicity was listening maybe most of all. This was the man she had sworn to bring back to her people. She would not fail again.

X

 **BREACH EARTH, DARK QUARTER**

The jump ship sailed in, cloaked, for the… Honestly, Leonard couldn't say how many times they had been here in the last few days. In all likelihood they would not find anyone here, but it did feel like somewhere worth looking into. According to the boy Sara had spoken to, the breachers from Dark had received their signal for retreat, and they had to see if this retreat was only that or if it served as a mask for another crossing.

For many of them, this was a first trip to Dark, to Breach Earth at all for some. On the whole, the darkness didn't seem like too much of an issue. It could simply be night time. But as they moved in to land, as they got closer and saw the city, the thriving people moving along as though it was any other day, it all started to come into focus.

"Looks like late afternoon, last call before dinner time," Leonard estimated, looking into the crowds.

The jump ship set down on the cliffside overlooking from J'onn J'onzz' cave, leaving its passengers to walk down to the ground and into the city. He could have left it at the outpost, but he generally preferred it this way. In the meantime, the first timers in the group resisted the occasional question running through their minds, like how the people here had found a way to grow anything, like the trees and the grass that they could see, and whether they were able to grow things like vegetables.

If they had asked, Leonard would have told them what he himself had come to decide in discovering these quarters: don't get caught up in the details. Nothing was ever the same once you knew how it worked, was it?

They didn't stay in Dark very long. As to the pull back of their breachers, they found no one who would talk, even now, and on the subject of Malcolm Merlyn or any of his associates, they didn't even raise the smallest bit of information. If he had been here, no one had seen him, or anyone who _did_ see him knew better than to let it show. This visit had felt sort of cursory even before they'd come through the breach, but it had still felt like they needed to give it a shot.

"Where to next?" Tommy asked as they scaled their way back up to the jump ship. He was really trying not to sound like he didn't believe they'd ever find his father, but then if there was anyone among them who knew the man in any way, it was him, and no matter how much he'd genuinely devote himself to the search, it didn't stop the entire thing from feeling hopeless.

"To the quarter that gave us our first big smokescreen, us and the team that's been out here on Breach the whole time. We're going to War."

X

 **BREACH EARTH, WAR QUARTER**

On locations where they might leave the jump ship this time around, there really was no questioning required. The Waverider itself was sitting as ever within the gates of the outpost, and so the jump ship went to rejoin its home, docking into place before unloading its passengers on to main ship. They would soon be greeted by Ralph Dibny, as surprised as he was glad to see them.

"Did you come to make sure I didn't wreck the ship while you were away?" he half joked.

"I don't know how reassuring it is to know that this is the first place your mind went to. But no, that's not it at all. I'm here to talk to the suddenly non-artificial intelligence."

Catherine Grant, continuing in her migration from her hidden rooms, was on the bridge when Ralph led Leonard and his people to meet her. The rest of them only saw a woman standing there, working away, which made the look on his face – somewhere on the spectrum of walking into your living room in the middle of the night to find Santa Claus stood there, a very real person that was not your father in disguise or anything – sort of perplexing.

"You still haven't recovered from the surprise, have you?" Catherine asked, moving up toward him. She held out her hand, and Leonard looked down at it with some hesitation for a moment before reaching out his own hand and carefully shaking hers. The contact did enough to confirm she really was there, and he made a short sort of 'huh' sound. He still had just a hint of a feeling like maybe this was all a massive prank at the worst possible time, but here she was, real and alive.

"We… we need your help," he said as their hands released. "We're looking for someone. Specifically, we're looking for someone being here three days ago." Catherine looked at him, intrigued, before moving to see what she could find. All these years, they would call on Cat the AI and she would pass on what information they might need from her, and they hadn't thought too much of it, but now they had to realize it had been _her_ , typing away as she did now, with a flowing dexterity that seemed impossible.

With the added details passed on about Malcolm Merlyn, about the others working at his side, Catherine had soon found precisely what they were looking for.

"Does the resistance mind your using their network?" Leonard asked.

"The resistance has other problems to deal with," Catherine told him.

Though they had not been aware of it at the time, on their side of the breach and dealing with the War breachers' stand, on _this_ side, the resistance had been working to reduce the amount of people crossing over to Main. And here the group standing on the bridge of the Waverider realized maybe the distraction, that time at least, had not been for their sake alone.

X

 **THE BREACH SHIP WAVERIDER'S JUMP SHIP**

While the resistance army was dealing with the stand, a group of soldiers were seen escaping from the base. The surveillance showed plainly the insignias on their sleeves. Project soldiers. Titan, Horus, Neptune, Mercury. They were aided in this by two men. One of them was what they guessed to be someone from the projects wing. The other was Joseph West. Tommy recognized his best friend's father the moment he appeared on the screen.

And while this was happening, across the city, in what Leonard jokingly referred to as the enemy aligned forces' "lair," a trio of soldiers, Svarog branded, were escorted out by a man whose face they could not see, his posture telegraphing precisely how intentional that was. They met another man, and this one could have used all the disguises in the world without succeeding to fool his son. Malcolm Merlyn _had_ been in War three days ago.

Returning to the jump ship, there was that tense sort of silence about them again. If they had been able to find out about this three days ago, if they could have put a stop to it then, how many people would still be alive today? They might not have understood what it was all about yet, but they wouldn't have needed to. They would have known enough to stop them.

Surely by now Ralph would have communicated their discovery to the rest of his team, helping them as much as it would help Leonard's team. As to their people back on Main, it had been decided that for the time being it wouldn't do more than to add to the pull on their focus, and they didn't need that. Thinking of Iris and how hearing about her father would affect her, Tommy had more than been on board for not sharing any of it just yet.

"Ralph doesn't advise our heading into the city for the time being, and I'm forced to agree, so we'd better move on to our next destination," Leonard told the team.

"These two," Michael asked, reviewing the images they'd gathered through Catherine's help. He was indicating the man at the resistance army base on one image, and the faceless man meeting Malcolm with the Svarog soldiers. Leonard frowned, moving back as he'd been about to take the pilot's seat.

"No name on him," he showed the first man. "But going by what Rip, and Gideon, and Slade have told me of their time there, I think this is the one in charge of the special projects, the one who tried to replicate Slade's speed, who turned the Hawks into what they became… And this one," he stared at the other image, like some phantom from his past. "I don't need to see his face to know who he is. This is him, the Enemy."

"He has to have another name, right?" Felicity asked him. "Finding it a bit hard to just call him 'the Enemy,'" she pointed out, intoning dramatically.

"Make that two of us," Oliver nodded in agreement. Everyone looked to Leonard, the only one of them who might be able to help them on the matter.

"He's been around longer than anyone had any right to be. Some will tell you there have been several people holding up the mantle, but that's crap. It's been him all along, changing his name to confuse matters. Most recently, until he died… or we thought he died… he was going by the name of Curtis Holt."

X

 **BREACH EARTH, DESERT QUARTER**

Sara never imagined she'd be back here again so soon. Only hours ago, she and Ava had been in the market square, setting off Laurel's device, ensuring that all those breachers who'd jumped from here to Main would be brought back and could neither harm the people of Main nor be hurt by them in return. Now Ava was off in Silent Quarter, as far as she could say, and she was here, attempting to pick up on a trail that would lead them to Malcolm Merlyn.

Up until now, while they _had_ found out some things about what had happened before and it was of some assistance somewhere, it didn't get them any closer to finding those five men. The event in Desert was still so fresh in their minds, all of them, it did feel like if they ever had a chance of getting information, this would be the place. They needed it to be the place.

They flew over the market square, and Sara had to look out below as they went, to see what it looked like. The people were gone, the breachers, the old woman and her children, the people of the city who'd come to lend a hand… In its own way it resembled what the other side of the breach would look like, trampled with the aftermath of a large-scale fight… and the sweep Laurel's device.

When they had stepped off the jump ship, wisely told to lose a layer or two of clothing, Leonard wanted them to go see one of their allies, which turned out to be the same woman Sara and Ava had visited before. She'd come through for them beyond all expectations, though it did concern Sara that they might be asking too much on the same day.

But the old woman did not mind at all. She was so thankful for the part they'd played in dealing with the breachers, so if there was anything at all that she could do to help again, she wanted to do it.

"We're looking for someone," Felicity explained. "He might have been here earlier, with a few others." She showed the array of images to the woman. There were photographs of Malcolm, and Joseph, and Julian, followed by the sketch of the Future man, and another, this one from the Waverider's archives. They had no recordings, no stills of the Enemy, of Curtis Holt, could never manage it, but they had put together a sketch of him, so now here it was.

The old woman leaned in to look at the images, inspecting each one of them in turn. She shook her head. She had not seen them. She turned her head up to look at them again.

"But I know who might have. Go to the Dunies." After they left, Agent Drake was the one to ask the question. Who or what were the Dunies?

"Children, peddlers," Leonard explained. "They're everywhere, and most won't even pay them any mind. But she's right. If someone has seen anything, it might be them."

X

 **BREACH EARTH, FUTURE QUARTER**

Once again, the old woman had set them on the path they needed to find. The Dunies, once they'd been spotted, had started coming out left and right, curious at the appearance of the Waverider man, showing pictures and asking questions. Finally, a boy had stepped up, all of eight years old. He had seen and heard two of them talking – he had pointed to the images of Julian and the Future man. According to the boy, Julian had been looking for something here, a few hours ago, while the square had been caught up in the breachers' stand.

And finally, the Future man had supposedly said something to the effect of 'I'll see what my people can do.' Now, they were still going off of the Waverider team's assumption that this man was from Future. It was a thin lead at best, but they had gone past the time of picking and choosing. So, they had sailed off to Future Quarter.

A stop at their outpost had quickly shown that their guess had not been an error. The moment they showed the sketch, the agent they'd been asking to run the image through their files had given the man's name. Vandal Savage. That was his name, and the way he said it, they could guess what the agent thought of him.

"How have I not heard of this one?" Leonard asked.

"He's never left the quarter," the agent shrugged. Dinah stepped up and showed him the footage they'd gotten a hold of back in Desert.

"Hasn't he?" The agent's eyes bugged out.

After this, they had decided to seek out some of the Waverider's allies in the city, figuring they might know more of the situation. They left the outpost, getting back to the jump ship.

"I'm starting to understand what you were saying about the agents posted in here," Felicity told Dinah as they went. A year back, she'd almost been transferred here and she'd fought it down, knowing how the ones who came here had a way of ending up overwhelmed and distracted by the city's mentality.

"I don't know which one was the weirdest we've seen so far, but this one is rising in the ranks," Tommy declared, looking into the city, past the gates.

If he'd turned a second later, he might have missed what he spotted out of the corner of his eye. But then the moment it registered, he froze. His mind seemed intent on telling him he was imagining things, but he was certain… his heart was ramming in his chest. He'd just seen his father.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	43. DAY 086 (vol 2, ch 43)

_Day 86 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 43_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

Losing a chunk of their people to the search for Malcolm Merlyn was going to take a toll, they had known this right away. But the thing with being caught in this situation for as long as they had by now was that it gave them a good idea of what they were up against and how to handle it… mostly. The breachers all had their ways of surprising them with how they went about their troublemaking. 'That's a new one' was becoming a phrase they heard a lot of, right up there with 'oh not this again.'

With the group off on the jump ship, the need would never be so strong as it was now for the rest of them to buckle down, to find their rhythm and hope they didn't trip up along the way. All the same, having the jump ship otherwise occupied meant that they couldn't be called on to ferry back the breachers. A few of their agents had been equipped with the means to open breaches in the field, something they'd tried not to do too extensively before. Circumstances had changed.

Laurel Lance now sat at a station near Iris, near Cait, doing just as they were doing. She directed response teams to new breacher incidents as they came along, alerted 'return' agents to where they would be needed with their breach tech.

It wasn't what she'd imagined she'd end up doing when she came here, but it had its benefits. She was able to observe the maps as they evolved, the arrivals, the departures, the encounters between their people and the breachers… They'd been talking of the patterns of the breachers' attacks. What if they could use what they saw here on the maps to predict where the breachers might go? It wouldn't go precisely down to exact locations, but just being in the area already…

"Hourman, there are three breachers out of Weighted, two blocks north, moving east," she alerted her father. It still felt strange to call him that, and she only had to catch the small chuckle still on his voice when he answered her to know he felt strange to hear her call him by the name, too, or maybe just knowing she was out here, directing the calls.

"On our way," he told her. For now, his team consisted of his partner Ed Thawne and Agent Lane of ARGUS. It was easy to hear, in so little words, how her father was glad for being out doing his part in the city instead of all the back and forth he had been doing until earlier that day. He didn't like it so much that he wouldn't prefer for the problem to be over, but for now… this would do.

Across from her, Cait Snow was doing her part, with Ruby Arias at her side. The girl had been alleviated of some of her fears after that 'vacation' in Fast Quarter, being removed from all of this while her mother's leg was allowed to heal, and the return of her energy at Cait's side could not have come at a better time. Still… Cait knew some things she had to keep from the twelve-year-old, specifically the things relating to her father, and she hated to lie, but in this case it was absolutely for her own good.

"There's one there," Ruby pointed to the screen.

"I see it," Cait smiled. "And look who's near." Samantha, Wild Dog, Killer Frost. She gave her a nod. Go ahead. Ruby looked down to the microphone. She hesitated. For having been so eager before, she was oddly silent here. Maybe not so odd… "It's okay if you're scared for her," Cait gave her an encouraging look. "People need help out there, and your mom is there to give it." Ruby connected the call.

"Mom, there's a new breacher a little way back the way you guys came from."

"On it," Samantha's voice sounded, then, "Does Cait know you're on the mic?"

"She does," Ruby looked back to the woman at her side.

Next to them, Iris West was careful, tracking and directing two different calls. At one end of the city, Speedy and Arsenal were squaring off against a pair of Frozen breachers, while at the other there were Thea Queen and Slade Wilson against a meta from Slow Quarter.

She couldn't spare a moment's distraction, and having those two calls was about as much as she could ask for in this circumstance, but she had always been solid as far as multitasking went, and this proved to be both her gift and her curse, as it appeared to give her mind license to keep both calls separate and running smoothly, all the while thinking about how, at this very moment, Tommy and several others were out there looking for Malcolm Merlyn, which could in turn lead to their finding her father, too.

How easy it would be to use this computer station to tap into whatever they might have come to find out there, wherever they were now. It would have been a breeze, but… she couldn't. It would only be playing into his hands, wouldn't it? Letting herself get distracted? She wasn't going to do that. Not for him, not for any of them.

X

 **BREACH EARTH, FUTURE QUARTER**

 **ARGUS OUTPOST**

Tommy had not seen his father in a good long while, and if it had been up to him that would have carried on being the case. Even now, as they had been running left and right on Breach Earth, attempting to find him, as much as he did want him to be found, he had not wanted to have to see him, and now…

"We're not leaving," he turned back to the others, still in the process of boarding the jump ship. Leonard Smart poked his head out to look at him.

"We have two more quarters to…"

"I just saw my father," Tommy revealed, his voice flat as he pointed past the gate to the way his father had been walking, as though he was a regular citizen of Future, not a speedster, an alien, a fugitive…

The others looked to him, looked down the street.

"Are you sure?" Felicity asked, her whole posture shifting. She wasn't just a heroine of Earth anymore, she was a captain in search of her mark.

"I've seen that man walk away from me enough times to know him when I see him. Now, you want to argue about this or you want to go after him? Trust me, the guy's real fast when he wants to be."

Leonard followed them aboard the cloaked jump ship, Sara, Michael, and Lyla with him, as Tommy, Felicity, Dinah, and Oliver took off on foot from the outpost. Wherever Malcolm was going, if it really was him, they'd lost sight of him, and as they tried to find him again, it felt as though losing him here, now, would be letting their last shot at him go. If he realized they were on to him…

"Does he know about you?" Tommy asked Felicity. "Would he know who you are if he saw you?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure. He _shouldn't_ , he ran before we were assigned to track him, but look at everything that's been happening the last few days, I wouldn't be surprised if he knew exactly who I am, who Roy is, and Rory, too."

"He definitely knows who _you_ are," Tommy turned to Oliver. "He's the whole reason your parents got that message to you, after he showed your mom pictures of the two of you."

"Right," Oliver could only nod. He remembered when he'd heard about this from his parents, and the feeling still left him uncomfortable. It was one thing that Malcolm Merlyn knew who they were, knew about the Flash and Kid Flash, but he'd had someone spy on them. _She's his daughter… she's his daughter…_ The more he learned about the guy, the only thing Oliver could think was how he really didn't want him anywhere near Thea.

"Any sign of him?" Dinah asked those up on the jump ship. Leonard Snart's voice replied.

"I'm trying to remain inconspicuous in a city where there is every chance this cloak is fooling absolutely no one while also trying to spot one guy in a crowd of…"

"Right there!" Sara's voice cut him off. Dinah signalled to the others and they slowed down. "Turn right at the next corner."

"What she said," Leonard followed. "We'll set down as soon as he stops somewhere and join you as soon as we can."

It was three more minutes of walking, with their 'eye in the sky' directing them, but finally Tommy saw him again, the same one he had seen before. If he had been sure on so brief a glimpse before, there really was no doubt to him now.

"How do we want to do this?" Oliver asked.

"Not at all, but barring that, if he doesn't want us near them, he'll run the nanosecond he realizes we're following him," Tommy told him.

"Not a problem for me," he promised.

"Of course, it's just as bad if he actually wants us near them, isn't it?" Dinah pointed out. Of course, again, there remained the chance of their doing little more than playing into Malcolm's game.

They continued their careful approach for a few minutes, never letting Malcolm out of their sight as he seemed to be on some scenic stroll through Future. It didn't sit well with his pursuers, only made them that much more certain that he knew they were here and he was toying with them.

And then something happened, fast, so fast that no one but Oliver saw it, the world slowing to a crawl as Malcolm Merlyn turned around and looked right at him from where he stood… and he ran.

With a crack of electricity in his eyes, Oliver ran after him.

In the next blink of an eye, Supergirl saw him go and rocketed into the sky and flew after him. By the time Tommy, Dinah, and the team on the jump ship had the chance to process anything, the rest of them were gone.

"What do we do now?" Leonard asked.

"I wouldn't get in the middle of that, if I were you," Sara told him. "And if that's not good enough and you insist on tracking them down, just keep your distance?"

"First things first, how about picking us up?" Tommy requested.

Even as this conversation was being carried on, the others were already far, far away, cutting across the city until they reached the outskirts. Oliver was only aware that Supergirl was trailing alongside him, flying overhead. All he was focused on was the man running as fast as he did, if not faster.

He wanted to cut him off, but he didn't know how. Wherever he looked in this strange city that somehow managed to both look like his city and something completely different, he knew that he would need to know it way more than this before he attempted a detour. He needed help.

"Supergirl, you hear me up there?" he called into his comms.

"Loud and clear, Flash. Super hearing."

"Right, well if you have anything else in your bag of tricks to slow or stop him…"

"Oh, I have plenty, I just need to get a shot at him. He's so much faster than he was before he… well, ran… If you get his attention though, I might be able to do something."

"Tag team, sounds good."

It was a bit of a rough go, keeping up with him but also generating anything resembling a lightning bolt he might try, not at him but near enough that, with some luck, he'd turn and Supergirl could do her bit. But he finally did it, the bolt shooting off and whizzing right by him.

All it took was for him to slow down just a little, and Supergirl let loose her freeze breath and sent him spinning out to crash into the ground. Oliver came skidding to a stop in front of him, before Supergirl landed across from him, from Malcolm, so that the fallen fugitive was surrounded. Not that he looked as though he was about to run off again. He turned his head up, looked to Oliver in front of him, turned his head and looked to Felicity behind him.

"Congratulations, this must be a big moment for both of you," he declared, sounding almost as though he was about to laugh. In the next moment, Oliver had him by the collar, pulling him up to his feet.

"Whatever this is about, you're going to put a stop to it."

"And you're going to make me?" Malcolm asked, the farthest from intimidated as one could get. "Shouldn't you be back on Main, making sure none of these breachers who've been making so much trouble go and hurt any innocent people?" He was taunting him, Oliver realized it, as much as he and his friends had been doing it for days.

He wasn't going to rise to that. He wouldn't play his game.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked, shoving him back. _Is it about Thea?_ He wanted to ask, but he didn't dare. He wouldn't bring her up.

He didn't have to. He must have had her right there on his face.

"How's my girl?" Malcolm asked.

"She's not your girl. She will never _be_ your girl. She's not interested."

"She doesn't even know me," Malcolm replied. "Once she does, I'm sure she won't give a second thought to that police captain of yours." Anatoly… Of course, he'd have found out about him, about other parts of their lives. And now here he was, using the man who'd raised them for all those years as a trigger, wanting to make him react. He wasn't going to do that.

"That's not what your son told us," Felicity spoke up then, taking a shot of her own. It seemed to work, going by the way Malcolm turned to look at her.

"And you… you would be, what, my captor, my… jailor?"

"I'm the one who's going to bring you to face the justice you've evaded all this time," she glared back at him, never blinking.

"You keep telling yourself that," Malcolm was no more thrown than she'd been. "You and I would have been contemporaries, wouldn't we? The years have been a lot nicer to you, although all in all," he gestured to his face, his hand sweeping down to indicate the rest of him. "The way I see it, you're very, very late. By now, they'll have either declared you as dead in the line of duty… or as deserters. Why even bother anymore? You have been given a chance at a life here with power beyond imagining, and you want to squander it, to take me back to a place where you are no more powerful than the common man?"

"If you think I care about my powers that much, you really don't know me at all."

"No, of course not. Do-gooders, you're all the same," Malcolm scoffed. "Now," he turned back to Oliver, clapping his hands together. "I won't insult you by letting this talk go on any longer, letting you assume that anything you could say to me would alter any part of what I have planned for your Earth, for this one… I won't even go after your people in their 'invisible' ship. But I am going to leave now. Say hi to my daughter? And give my love to your mother," he gave as parting words.

When he left, the instinct was to go after him, but they knew all too well there'd be no point to it. It was as they'd said, wasn't it? He had let them follow him, let them catch up to him, because he wanted it. They couldn't get him now.

"Are you okay?" Felicity asked, stepping toward him, as near them the jump ship set down. The passengers emerged, joining them.

"What happened? Where did he go?" Tommy asked.

"Got away," was all Oliver would say.

"Why didn't you run after him?" Leonard frowned.

"Because there would have been no point. He said what he had to say."

They were standing on the outskirts of the city. There was something about being here that felt strange, or just… wrong. It was hard to explain. All they could say was that the longer they stood here, the more they wanted to leave. So, they got back on the jump ship, and they sailed back into the city and toward the breach that would take them back to Main. There was no point to their staying here any longer than this. That they'd gone on without being accosted by any Future folk was already surprising.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Lyla asked.

It was a valid question, really, but they didn't know how to respond. Catch the bad guys, that was usually the way they were supposed to do things, wasn't it? But what happened when the bad guys were always five, ten steps ahead? Even now, they were still behind, they were still not seeing what this was about. And they wouldn't, not until it was too late.

"For now, we go back… we do what we can," Sara told her. They had been gone a while. A fifth day would be staring them in the face before long, and the city would still need their help. If Dark had pulled back, would others do the same? Would the next day be the last day? Would it really feel like it was over if the only story they had to work off of was filled with holes? What were they going to tell the others?

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	44. DAY 088 (vol 2, ch 44)

_Day 88 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 44_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

These had been the best four days of his life. It wasn't as though being on Main, being away from Mist, for that short amount of time had miraculously cured him of the sickness inherent to him, to anyone born to his city, but there was something to be said for the time he had spent here, breathing easily, drinking water, eating well, sleeping well… He had done well to ration his money, to ensure that it would last him for the length of his time here.

It would all come to an end soon, he could just feel it. It had been four days already, he just knew before long he would see the signal that told him it was time to go back.

He didn't want to see it. He didn't want to go back.

Should he have said no? Would not coming at all be better? He wanted to say that it would, but deep down he knew it really wouldn't. It never could. Yet here he was, having spent his time here and… it felt like he would lose his mind if he had to go back, if he had to put on that mask again…

He could stay… he could… No one had to know. He would just ignore the alert when it came, he would lay low, find some way to establish himself here… He might get better, given enough time. Wouldn't it be worth all the misery he'd gone through growing up if he found a way to thrive?

He would spend his life waiting for the day when his secret would come out if he did that. It might fall back into his mind, not so prominent that he would worry all the time, but it wouldn't take much for it to come back up to the front. He didn't want that, and to be honest… it didn't feel right. For all some others might say, he was okay with ARGUS. They had given him a job at their outpost, and maybe some of their agents looked down on the people of his city, but others had been his friends. They had looked after him as best they could.

He had been given passage on to Main four days ago with a clear demand for this service. He was to make trouble. He hadn't felt good about it, but he'd done some things… Maybe not as bad as some of the other things he'd seen, which might explain why he was never caught, but he had done what he could, what he felt wouldn't betray the person he'd tried to be all his life. What would he do now? Return to Mist to slowly die like the rest of them, stay here in hiding all his life, or… maybe he could find something else, some other way. Some way to do right and still thrive…

X

With both the Green Arrow and Spartan off on Breach looking for the Merlyn guy, the two of them had been left to their own devices. That was just fine. They were Speedy and Arsenal, they could handle themselves. There was Cynthia, too, although she had gone off on her own after the others had left. Cisco was almost sure Sin was only giving him a hard time about it so he'd get annoyed enough not to have time to get in his own head about any sort of feelings he might have been having for the daughter of the League of Assassins.

The two of them – Cisco and Sin, not him and Cynthia – made liberal use of this sibling-like mentality happening with them, but same as actual siblings may have fought and messed with each other, there would be the flip side, the one where they related, where they looked out for each other. And they had that in spades.

They understood each other, plain and simple. Both of them had come by the Green Arrow's team by a similar request. They saw what she did, saw what _they_ could do if they were able to stand at her side, and that was what they'd done. They'd fought for everything, their skill, their names… their suits… and they had earned them. They had become Speedy and Arsenal, and when they walked through the city, the evening of the fourth day creeping up on them, they did so with their heads held high, ready for anything.

"Is it just me or are we having to travel further to get to these calls?" Sin asked as they climbed off the motorcycle they'd gotten hold of, moving to the location Laurel Lance had sent them to.

"Not just you," he agreed. "Maybe they're starting to get the message that we're not going to let them do whatever they want our here."

"Maybe. But you heard what she said, back at HQ. The quarters are starting to pull back, not because we've been doing such a good job. They did what they were supposed to do. We didn't just play the game, we got _played_." He didn't say anything as they hurried on to find a break in was in progress.

"Maybe… but what choice did we have?"

The breachers were out of Desert, they knew at first sight, but then their being metas was a surprise, and if Sin hadn't seen the wind up one of them took, Cisco might have clocked out for good. But they recovered and after a fight that might have been called uneven for the powers on one side and the weapons on the other, they had the breachers under control and waiting to be escorted back to their quarter.

"Way to earn your name, Speedy," Cisco grunted, feeling at his shoulder which had been grazed by one of the metas and now looked like it might scar on healing.

"Need a band-aid?" she asked as they walked back toward the motorcycle. "Or ten?"

"Eleven or nothing."

X

"Iris, are you sure about that location?" Jim asked as he looked around, Samantha and Killer Frost on either side of him doing the same.

"It was," Iris' voice replied in their ears. "I don't see the breachers anymore, they were just where you are now a minute ago."

"They aren't here now," Killer Frost informed her.

"I'll look into it, but until then…" her voice trailed off for a moment, then, "Get to the park." They packed back into the van and drove off to the park as Iris directed them.

"Where were these ones from?" Samantha asked.

"Light Quarter," Iris reported. The trio in the van shared a look. Was Light pulling back, too?

"After the park, let's try and grab dinner," Jim looked to his passengers and teammates. This was met with immediate agreement. They were running on empty.

The park was handled much in the same way the previous location had been: the breachers were gone by the time they arrived. Witnesses told them how the trio of breachers had been trying to rob them, and then they'd just stopped, shared a look, then walked off, opened a breach, and disappeared.

Jim, Samantha, and the once again reverted Amaya soon stopped at a diner, grabbing a much-needed dinner before sitting in a booth. Samantha took the opportunity to check in with Ruby and Lisa back at headquarters, confirming not only that all was well but also that she would be returning to collect them and head home in a few hours. It wouldn't come a minute too soon.

"So, what happens when they all go away?" Jim asked. "We pretend like all's well that ends well and go back to normal? We still haven't found Zari and Kendra and the others." He carried the anger, the frustration, like they were a familiar weight in him, the kind that drove him when he needed it to keep going, and right now he needed it more than ever.

"If the breachers are gone, then we can devote all the time and power we have, all of us, until we find them. And we will," Amaya nodded, showing something of her meta side still very much in her natural state, deep in her eyes.

A few minutes later, it was Cait who contacted them, another call waiting to be picked up, not far from where they were. Gathering up what remained of their dinner to take along for the drive, they climbed into the van once again. They would need to gas up after this one.

"How are you doing back there?" Amaya asked her teammate back at HQ.

"Tired," Cait admitted.

"After this call, we can head over there, we'll drive you home," Jim offered.

"I'll be alright, I'll wait," Cait told him, sounding grateful for the offer all the same.

"Look at that, we didn't get stood up this time," Samantha pointed up ahead of them on the street. The breachers were still there… for now.

X

It was not difficult to find something to keep them occupied these past few days, if anything was on their mind… But then on the whole, especially when she ran, Thea Queen still managed to find that her mind could wander just fine. And then, tonight, with fewer breachers out and about, it was as good as asking her to sink into thoughts of her brother, her parents… her other brother, and the man who she'd learned to be her actual birth father.

Of all of them, it might have been that the ones she was finding herself the most prone to think about would be her parents, the ones she'd believed dead for all these years, only to discover they had been very much alive and thinking the same of Oliver and her. Before long, they would be turning in for the night, she would go back to them… It was actually getting to be almost normal now, to have them around.

But it wasn't them she obsessed over in her thoughts. It should have been, both something else, someone else, had pushed those thoughts aside. How could she _not_ think about her secret/big bad birth father?

She had to distract herself, a thought that was almost laughable, considering what the last four days had been. She looked to Slade Wilson standing next to her as they'd come to a stop. They'd been on their way to a call, only to have Laurel Lance back at HQ tell them that the breachers were gone. Now here they were, waiting to hear back from her.

"So, you got your speed artificially, right?" she asked. He looked at her. "I swear, I have a good reason to ask."

"Yes," he finally said. "There was an incident in a lab, and it left me a speedster."

"Okay… Can it be replicated?"

"I assure you, Miss Queen, they've tried. And they've failed every time." She took this in, nearly abandoning the subject entirely before deciding to just come right out with it and ask.

"Do you think they'll ever get it right?"

"Why do you ask?" he turned to look at her. "Just who are you so eager to turn into a speedster?"

"My… my brother, my other brother," she revealed. "For some reason, he didn't get his, like the rest of us did, and I just thought… maybe that could change."

"Tommy Merlyn," Slade understood.

"Yeah," Thea confirmed. He was silent for a moment.

"Who knows, maybe someday they will find the way… but the way I see it, it might not be worth the price. Do you know that he would even want the speed?" Thea considered this. For what conversations they'd gotten around to have, him and her, she didn't know for sure that he wanted it or not. "I'll take your silence as all the answer I need." She let out a breath. "It can't be forced. But if it should happen, then maybe it will, someday."

X

With neither ship nor jump ship, the Waverider's Hourman, Obsidian, and Black Canary continued to lend support to the forces doing all they could to find and apprehend the breachers still roaming the city. They were not in charge of returning, and that was all good, but the more time they spent back here, it made them think about all the others who'd been at this for four days, running from one place to another, and another, and another, putting out fires everywhere. For all they'd complained about the ferrying duties, they knew they'd had it easy compared to a lot of the others.

All three of them worked to protect the city before the Waverider had ever come into their lives. They still did that now, with their team or in their other posts. For Agent Lane of ARGUS, that was simple enough. For Detectives Lance and Thawne it had required something of an agreement with Captain Knyazev. They would still put their time in as detectives, when they weren't aboard the ship, and that was how they wanted it.

For all that, the three of them walked the city that evening and it felt like maybe they hadn't been spending as much time with their regular lives lately. They were needed on the Waverider, on Breach Earth. With so many quarters, and more and more breachers – not as much as the last four days – than they'd once had to deal with, not just from Breach to Main but within the quarters of Breach, and more demand for their assistance from ARGUS, it was hard not to get swept up in the constant travels. It wasn't like this, running left and right, no. They could spend hours in one quarter like they could spend days, sometimes a week, or two… The longest stretch had been the forty-two days in Slow… to them, at least.

Like the others, the three of them experienced instances of breachers leaving Main before they could be reached. They tried to do their best to track which quarters were beating a retreat, checking them off a list if they could. At the same time, they kept thinking about these retreats, and as much as it could be seen as good news, as the situation slowly but surely moving toward the city being 'returned' into their hands, they knew it might not be that simple.

How did they know they were all pulling back and going back to their quarters, that they were staying there? What if they came back, when the people of Main started to let their guards down.

They knew that the fewer breachers remained, the more ARGUS might start to thank the heroes for their services, might decide that they could handle the rest of this alone. They didn't think for sure that Director Heywood would do that, but with the barely sidestepped controversy over his grandson, he might have his hand forced in reducing the outside hands.

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

"That's five quarters who've backed out now," Iris counted off the list she'd compiled. Each quarter was listed here, some of them marked with a star, showing they were believed as having started the process of leaving Main, while five had a checkmark and were crossed out, as they were now firmly believed to have received the alert and left entirely.

If they were to scan the maps, there would be no more of those marked along the way for those quarters. There could still be people here who had originated from other quarters, but their circumstances were different, and they did not appear on the maps, this was not a locator.

Looking around headquarters, the pervading mood was a tense one. Part of them wanted to feel encouraged, wanted to look at this and see the light at the end of the tunnel. They didn't express it though, oh no. It was too soon. They still couldn't be sure. So, for now, they kept their hope on the inside, and they kept working.

"Iris?" She turned, finding Ruby and Lisa had returned from their hunt for 'evening home stretch snacks,' and the girl looked uncertain.

"Oh, gimme, what did you bring?" she asked, reaching for the bag Ruby held.

"There's a guy standing outside, he says he wants to talk to someone in charge? He says he's from Mist." Iris looked to Lisa, who gave a confirming nod.

"Did he say anything else?"

"He said he wanted to turn himself in… or apply, I think."

Iris had turned to Cait, who nodded in a promise to keep an eye on her station, before moving toward the main entrance. Walking just outside the door, she could see him, thin and sickly looking even from behind. He was sitting on the steps, looking up at the sky. She moved down to join him, keeping just a bit of distance in case this was a trick. He looked up when he heard her approaching. He couldn't have been more than nineteen or twenty.

"You're not the director," he spoke.

"And you know this how?" she asked, curious.

"I've met him before. I have a job, at the outpost in Mist," the boy explained. Iris made a judgment call here, taking a seat on the steps next to him. "I came here… someone wanted me to…"

"Make trouble, I know." He nodded.

"I didn't want to. I just wanted to get out of Mist, I couldn't… Now I think I'll have to go back soon and I don't want to. I don't want to be a fugitive either, so I was thinking… maybe they'd let me have a job, here. Except maybe they won't let me, because of what I did."

"And what is it you did exactly?" Iris asked. When he went about listing his 'misdeeds,' she had to will herself not to smirk. His record for trouble resembled no more than what kids might do, believing they were being rebels. This boy here meant no harm; he didn't seem to even know how to mean it. "Come on. I think the director would be willing to hear you out."

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	45. DAY 090 (vol 2, ch 45)

_Day 90 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 45_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

As soon as they'd become aware of the jump ship's return in the city, of the team's arrival to headquarters, there was an immediate pull of focus once again, but really how could they help themselves? They knew something had to have happened, one way or the other. They had to have found _something_ about Malcolm Merlyn, if not the man himself. If they had actually managed to capture him he would be walked right across headquarters, they knew, so they didn't have high hopes on that front.

When they saw the looks on the team's faces, it started to feel like hope had no place at all in this scenario.

"How did it go?" Iris asked, as she and Cait walked up to them. "Did you find anything, did you…" She was looking to Tommy more than anyone, she couldn't help it. This was her closest friend, and not only that… Knowing who the top players were, it made the two of them essentially feel that they carried the weight of everything. He was going to tell her, he had to, no alternative.

"I saw him," Tommy sighed. Iris blinked. "My father," he clarified, and she knew he could see the small flicker in her features, like she'd thought for a second he'd been talking about _her_ father.

"Where?"

"In Future Quarter. I just turned for a second and there he was. We followed his trail after that."

"You spoke to him?" Iris asked.

"No, but he did," Tommy nodded to Oliver. "And her," he continued with a nod to Felicity. "He ran, so they followed him, faster than the rest of us could. And then he… got away," Tommy went on, and here it felt as though she wasn't getting the whole story as to how he had gotten away. She forgot all about it when Tommy looked to her, that look in his eyes she knew very well. It always went back to _her_ father, that look.

"Was he…" she slowly asked.

"No, no, he wasn't in Future, or at least we didn't see him. But… we did see some footage of him. We went into War Quarter before all that, we followed the trail you compiled for us. We went to the Waverider, we checked what was happening in the city while the War breachers were making their stand here, and we saw my father, and your father… breaking out special soldiers."

"The ones who launched those grenades," Iris recalled, her voice faint.

"Yeah," Tommy bowed his head. "Hey," he gave her arm a squeeze, pulled her into a hug. He could see, all these last few days, how much a part of her had wanted there to be a moment where they discovered, ah ha, her father wasn't actually a part of this. But he was, of course he was. She had known already, but every reminder only refreshed the pain.

The returned team had not been back at headquarters long that the teams out in the field, those (im)patiently awaited their return, had started to appear, trailing back into the building as they marked the end of this fourth day for them. Some needed patching up, others just wanted to find out if the jump ship was back and whether they'd found out anything.

The Green Arrow and Spartan had been waiting on their team, both of them reflecting on what they'd seen or heard on their journey on to Breach Earth. They had seen things they could barely have imagined, and in no way with the detail of what they had seen. A strange part of Sara had come to surface when they'd been on that ship. They had not gone to Haven, no, but the thought of it had left her wondering…

Did she want Michael to see it, the place she'd been so confused by, the place where she'd spent her years before making it back here? Or did she want to keep him and the others separated from it? She would think she knew, but she could never make up her mind. It wouldn't matter. They hadn't gone, that was all.

When they'd spotted Sin and Cisco coming in, they'd moved to meet them at once, noticing the look of Cisco's shoulder. Sin, for her part, was sporting a few telltale cuts like she'd dealt with flying glass.

"Yeah, don't ask," she said, like talking too much would hurt, and if _that_ didn't warrant a lot of asking, they wouldn't know what did.

They'd gone to deal with Cisco's shoulder – and Sin's face, too – in the infirmary. He'd sat there trying to grunt the pain away but every so often yelping, as they would tend to him, while Sin unleased a torrent of insults at the medic observing her face that would appear to indicate the medic would suffer a painful and untimely demise if he wasn't careful.

"What happened out there?" Sin asked. "Did you find something? Did you find _him_? Ow!"

"It…" Sara started, then sighed. "It was complicated, but we did see him, yes, briefly. He got away."

"Why am I not surprised?" Cisco asked. He yelped on the last word.

"Well, you'll be happy to hear that things are starting to calm down here," Sin went on. "Depending on whether or not it is good news, which, it feels like it should, it does, but… I'm not sure?"

"You're not the only one," Michael assured her.

Outside in the hub, and as he waited for his sister and Slade to return, Oliver couldn't stop thinking about that encounter with Malcolm Merlyn, the chase… The man was so fast, Oliver had genuinely felt as though, if Malcolm had wanted it, he could have left him in the dust, even though _he_ was giving everything he had. He had to talk to his parents. There had to be a way for him to get faster, wasn't there? He needed to find it… as soon as possible.

Thea's return had been marked by her speeding up to find him, and he'd had to smile, if only for that moment, before he'd have to tell her what had happened out there. It still made his stomach churn to remember how Malcolm had referred to her as 'his girl.'

"How did it go, tell me," she insisted, demanded.

"Alright, just calm down, I'll…"

"Did you see him?" she didn't wait to ask, and remembered again, the feeling of being near Malcolm still in his thoughts. It was unpleasant in a way impossible to explain.

He wanted to lie to her. For a split second he wanted to and he was ready. But he knew better than to go down this path, and besides… she would have to know.

"We did," Oliver told her, and she grew tense. "I talked with him, I…" He let out a breath, relaying to story once again. As he went along, she looked more and more lost in her thought. "Hey, I'm not going to let him come near you. I'm sorry if I sound like the overprotective big brother again, but this time let's just accept it, alright?"

"Alright," she agreed, still far in her thoughts. "So he got away?"

"I… I let him go," he revealed, and he could just see in his sister's face how she was ready to smack him. "He would have evaded me. He's faster, and he's still playing us. At least this way I got to come back, we all did, and so we can figure out a plan to really go after him the next time."

"Am I still going to have to sit out?" she asked, and he had known this would come up.

"Thea, whatever your… Malcolm is working up to, if he gets to you, he… Thea, I looked at him, I saw him… He's everything Tommy has told us before. I hate to say it, but… he scares me, the thought of him being anywhere near you… scares me. And I'm asking you to imagine my side of it, imagine you have a little brother or sister and there's this person trying to get close to them… Do you let them?"

"Never," she had to admit. "But consider what it's like for me, having to hide out here. Please, Olly, let me face him, I don't mind. Let me just… get a chance to look him in the eye, tell him what I think of what he's been doing, tell him what I think of his… parenting… I don't care what he think, I don't care that he's my father. But I do care about showing him I'm not scared."

Oliver looked at his sister and he smiled. There she was… He would look at her, and oh it would take him back to the days of long ago, and the sound of his mother's voice.

With the rest of them still out there, Leonard had been glad when Slade had first come along to rejoin him. Despite his arrival earlier, he hadn't actually gotten the chance to see him since four days ago. It didn't feel like an eternity, but it was long enough to make anyone – and surprisingly even him – feel like something was missing. He still felt that for the rest of his team off on Breach… and for his ship…

"What happened out here while we were gone?" Leonard asked.

"We found some of the remaining breachers and returned them… those we could reach before they went back of their own accord. At this time, if it wasn't that some of them could change their minds at the last minute, I would say it is time to retreat, if they are only going to take themselves home. But so long as any of them remain, and maybe for some time more after that… we need to careful. They could try and catch us out unexpectedly."

"I have been thinking the same thing," Leonard told him with a nod. "You're right about the diminished numbers however." He hadn't been here for all those departures earlier. He didn't look as though he understood the way the game had changed since he'd gone.

Before they could get too much further into this, the rest of their Main-bound teammates rejoined them. There were some handshakes here, a hug there… For them, too, it was the first time they saw him since he'd walked through from Breach Earth, and for how much they were happy to see him, this was still not the time for fun and games.

Leonard went about his own way of sharing the story of their time in Future, how they had come upon Malcolm Merlyn… by complete chance or because it had been chosen to happen that way… and the Flash and Supergirl had chased after him, leaving the rest of them to try and keep up from so much further back. By the time they'd reached the three of them it was now the two of them. Malcolm had gotten away.

The others looked disappointed but also as though they had half expected this to happen. For what little contact they'd had with him by then, they could already recognize that temperament in him. He would be one they had difficulty hanging on to. So maybe they had to put in the extra effort. The next time they came into contact with him, he refused to let him scamper off again. The man couldn't possibly see and hear everything at once, that was just not possible, and he said this in full awareness of the kind of world they had all come from.

The last of them to be reunited, even as Iris, Cait, Lisa, and Ruby had left their stations for the night, were those four and Wild Dog, Samantha, and Killer Frost. Ruby had come quickly to find her mother, openly relieved to find her coming along without any of the signs of physical damage or pain. She had healed very well in Fast – which really felt like a misnomer once you got inside – and she hadn't been hurt since she'd gotten back out there. It was reassuring, but it didn't erase her fears permanently, only for this moment, this night…

"Look at that, saved a few people, got free donuts for our troubles," Samantha held up a bag, and Ruby laughed, taking a look inside the bag.

"Ready to head home?" Amaya asked Cait, who gave a nod. She really looked like she would fall asleep the moment her head touched the pillow. Despite all that, she _had_ smiled and told her friend and teammate about the quick encounter she'd had with Firestorm. "They were here? When?" Amaya asked, looking around as though she thought they might still be here.

"A little while ago, they came for… Well, they came for that device you and Laurel Lance were working on," Cait revealed, turning to Samantha, who stared back at her in surprise.

"They did? She got it ready?" she asked.

"Seems that way," Cait confirmed. "From what we've been hearing, it's been a real success." Samantha smiled at that. Amaya's concerns were elsewhere.

"How were they?" she asked.

"In a hurry," Cait had to explain. "We said hello, they went to retrieve the weapon, and they were gone, which made sense, all things considered.

"Have you heard from Deathstroke?" Jim asked Cait. She let out a breath.

"Not yet. He assured us that when there was anything for us to know, we would know it. But by now I don't really know anymore," she admitted. It wasn't that she didn't trust that he could get to the bottom of us, because really, she did think if anyone would find them it would be him. But the longer they went without contact, she had to wonder where he'd gotten off to. Was he getting any closer to finding Ronnie and the others?

"If you two would like to, you'd be welcome to come over to my house," Samantha told her and Amaya. "It might make things easier… on all of us."

"Thank you, but I think I need to stay in my own bed, to… to feel him closer, to…" Cait blinked back some of those frustrated tears, and Samantha didn't insist any further. She knew that, if someone _she_ loved went missing… She looked to Ruby standing at her side, stuck to her, really, and she thought about being without her, especially after what she'd found out about what Julian had gotten himself mixed up in…

If she were in Cait's place, she'd be all over the place, too, especially with the pregnancy. She was really doing the best she could to keep herself together, and Samantha admired that… She also just really wanted to be able to look out for her, after all she'd done with Ruby alone.

With all of them more or less standing there once again, it had made it easier for Laurel to bring over what she'd been seeing, what all of the agents still at their desks were seeing. She showed it to her father, to her sister. She showed it to Leonard Snart, too.

It was taking them a moment to really process it, but there was no error. The map was clear. There were no more reports of breachers making trouble, breaking things… Not one blip at all.

"I checked and double checked, followed the list, and… this is not a mistake. They're all gone. All the invading breachers. The city is quiet again," Laurel reported to the rest of them.

They all looked to one another. They'd heard it, they knew it had to be true, with what they'd been seeing, but it still felt like it couldn't be…

"What do we do now?" Sin asked, from within the group.

"For now… everyone goes home, and sleeps. There's nothing else to do at this hour." They looked back to see Director Heywood walking toward them. "Tomorrow morning, we will see where we stand, and we will decide what steps to take next. However, it'll be my recommendation that we move whatever forces are necessary to locate and free those of your people who've been taken," he went on, meeting the eyes of Cait Snow, and Iris West, and Jim Olsen and Samantha Arias…

It wasn't all going to sink in until they'd gotten some sleep, until the sun could rise on a new day, they knew it as well as he did. And yet, just these words he had given them here had been good enough to lift their spirits. They were climbing out of these four days. It would take time, after today, after… however many days it would take for them and the people on Breach, and their missing… But they had really turned a corner tonight.

Little by little, the teams left ARGUS headquarters, saying goodnight, splitting off toward home. For some, the night looked to be one of real, good, sound sleep, for others it seemed likely to carry insomnia. In the end, while Cait and Amaya had not taken Samantha on her offer, they hadn't been only the two of them at Cait's house.

They had invited both Iris and Tommy to stay with them instead of having to sleep at headquarters. After everything they'd done, and seen, and been through, they had more than earned getting a break from the place and its cold and not so homely walls.

Even now, as they all moved toward home, they had no idea of how the night had yet to give out the last of its turns. There was one more coming for them all… and it was going to be the biggest one yet, bigger than the odd sort of fizzing out that had been the breacher invasion.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	46. DAY 092 (vol 2, ch 46)

_Day 92 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 46_

 **THE BREACH SHIP WAVERIDER**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**  
 ** _THE TIME SHIP WAVERIDER  
_ _(GRANT INNOVATIONS designation)_**

They had not gone straight home after leaving the place where they'd been held. It was their instinct to do so, more than anyone could understand, but there were several reasons why they hadn't done it. The biggest one had been to ensure that their kidnappers weren't lying in wait to gather them up again. They were still out there, and it was unlikely that they couldn't figure out where they lived or where they might be. That could have kept them away for so much longer, but it wouldn't. They would face whatever happened next head on.

Another reason had been that they wanted to wash up, replace or apply bandages where they were needed… They may not have been able to pretend like the last four days hadn't happened, but they could surely spare their loved ones – and themselves – this much. So, they had found themselves, of all places, at Barry Allen's apartment. He would still be on Breach, and Ronnie was able to let them in, though none of them had seen any sign of an actual key.

The entire process had been a relatively silent one. All of them had just the one thing in mind, and it was to go and see the people out there who would be waiting on the knowledge of their safe return. When there had been the first parting, it had felt strange. Sure, it wasn't forever, but it was another turn they were taking, and it was a big one. They were going home… mostly.

Mag and Carter were on their way back to War, for one of them their home, for the other the place where her friends would be. They had no idea what had been happening with the Mist weapon, all the developments that had come after Carter had been taken. Were they still in the thick of it? Was it over?

John had gotten them across the breach before returning to Main with the others. They had been left just inside the outpost gates. They approached the Waverider, still sitting there, unsure if anyone was even around to welcome them… until the hatch opened and Evelyn came running out.

"Carter!" she shouted, very nearly leaping into his arms. It was his first cause for laughter, genuine laughter, in a while, holding the girl who'd become the little sister he'd never had. He could just picture her, wherever she'd been on the ship, hearing that he was out there and taking off at a mad run. He could just hear her crying, and he hugged her tight. "What happened, what…"

Behind her, they were climbing down from the ship, the patchwork crew they'd formed over these days, new friends and old… They were stunned. Of all of them, J'onn J'onzz was the first to detach from the group and come to embrace Mag, showing relief for her safe return.

"We escaped… for the most part on our own," Mag informed him, and Evelyn, and the others. "The others should be on their way home back on Main as we speak."

"Your coat!" Evelyn pulled back now, remembering. "Your rags, I have them, they're on the ship, come on…" Slowly, they got back on the Waverider, many hugs and handshakes and pats on the back being given out as the two returnees passed through them.

They ended up in the galley, as Carter received his coat back from Evelyn. When she held it out to him, and he touched it, and held it close, he felt relief fill him. This was all he had of his mother, all he had to remember where he'd come from. He wouldn't forget, and he wouldn't let anyone take them from him again.

"Are you okay?" Gideon asked Mag. "Did they hurt you?" Mag looked at her, at Rip, both of them still showing several cuts and bruises from their encounter with the Horus soldiers, though they'd been able to wash up and change, too.

"You know me, I don't break easy. You, on the other hand, how did you…"

It wasn't important, to her or to Carter, to share the story of their captivity, they could tell. The two of them just wanted to know what had been happening while they'd been away. If there was anything to jump back into, that's what they wanted to do.

So, bit by bit, they had filled in the blanks for their returned friends. They had told them about how they had used the things Carter and Evelyn had found at the school, and tracked the weapons in Haven – hearing about that attack had been hard for Mag most of all – and ended up capturing the Horus girl, only to find that she _was_ from Project Horus. They told them about the entire discovery of the special projects' involvement, and how they had laid siege to Silent Quarter, and how they had gone out there to stop them and bring them back. The soldiers were now locked up in containment in the depths of Stein Labs.

Now, they would be in the process of destroying to grenades they had retrieved from Silent and, thanks to the assistance of the General, they would ensure that no more of the stock existed. That was to be what they'd do in the morning, after some much-needed rest.

"Good, count me in," Mag nodded.

"And me," Carter added.

Sitting among them, Jax was glad his quietness didn't stand out. He hadn't managed to talk to Seeker about what he'd found at the base. He was still trying to make sense of how he'd managed to see what he'd seen when he'd touched the frame. Then again, he had no idea an identical copy of that photo had been lifted from the Luthor house earlier, when Gideon had looked at it and recognized the person who'd given her wings.

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

 **HOME OF SAMANTHA & RUBY ARIAS**

As they'd broken off from the guys, promising they'd see each other in the morning, Zari and Kendra had gone toward their friend's home, the both of them feeling strangely light and happy. The two of them walking together, that might have been the most normal thing they'd done in days. And there was something to be said about knowing that they were about to make several people they loved feel so much better within moments.

They had a good feeling they'd find everyone but Jim up there, and there'd been some debate as to how they would do this. Just ring the bell and go 'hey, we escaped and we're back'? That felt weird. They both had keys to this place, just not on them… They might all need to change their locks…

Finally, establishing there really would be no right way to do it, they rang the bell.

From the way the door sprang open when it did, they imagined Samantha had checked to see who was ringing her bell at this hour, only to spot the two of them there. Her face lit up, and it made her friends tear up, just as quickly laughing, too. When they'd been walking up to the house, Zari had told Kendra how they were 'so going to cry.' Kendra had insisted they would be fine, which had given way to a wager. It didn't matter that one of them had been missing for a day, and the other for four. They were all unmeasurably emotional for being back.

"How did you… Did they let you go, was it… we had someone that was looking for you and…"

"Deathstroke? Yeah, he did come. We did most of the work getting out, well… Ronnie and Mag did, long story…" Zari explained, and to see how much Samantha just couldn't stop smiling… "Hey, I'm okay, we're okay."

"You… We… We were so worried about you," Samantha told her, looking on the verge of more tears.

Before those could be spilled, they had gone into the house, shutting the door. Just then, Lisa came in from the kitchen, carrying two cups of tea and asking who was at the door. The way she stopped short, spotting the three of them standing thee, it was a wonder she hadn't spilled boiling water over herself.

"Oh…" was all she could manage to say, setting down the mugs on the nearest surface that would support them before moving to hug her two returned friends.

"Ow, ow, easy…" Zari winced, and Lisa pulled back.

"Sorry, is it… your shoulder, right?" she asked, looking to Zari's arm. She lifted up her sleeve to show the freshly applied bandage.

"I mostly forgot it a lot of the time while we were back there, but since we got out it's like my body finally remembered about that burn."

"Where's my girl?" Kendra asked with a smirk. Samantha and Lisa both pointed up to the second floor. Kendra moved to climb the stairs, and Zari was soon at her heels. Samantha had gotten out her phone, texting for Jim to come over right away – specifying that this was not an emergency – just as they heard a high-pitched squeal from above. Ruby had just been reunited with her two missing 'aunts.'

When Jim Olsen showed up a few minutes later, wondering why he had been called back here, he walked into the living room to find Kendra, sitting on the couch with Ruby firmly nestled at her side, as Zari sat next to her, telling Lisa about how she'd broken Lyra Star's nose. She was really starting to like that story.

The two returnees looked up, finding their friend's shocked face before getting up to go and have one more relieved hug passed on to them. With only Jax and Mike missing now, their team had not been so near complete in days, and it felt good to have at least that much.

Here again there had been a lot of stories shared between the friends and teammates. Zari and Kendra heard about what had been happening here, with the breachers, with the discoveries made on their side and with their friends and allies off on Breach Earth. Kendra told them about how, according to Mag, she had been born in Nature Quarter, though she only had her vivid dreams to tell her she might have been telling the truth. She would need some time before she worked up the courage to ask her parents about it.

"So, they just… left," Zari shook her head, completely baffled by what she was hearing, how the breachers had up and left, none of them remaining, at least none of them sent to cause trouble that might still cause some more. For all intents and purposes, the situation was over. They were due to return to ARGUS in the morning however, so it might be that there would be more for them to do after all.

It still felt like they were missing something. Of course, to her, there was a lot missing. She'd been taken so near to the beginning of ths situation, only to be dropped into what seemed like the penultimate chapter, but it couldn't be… Was there a second volume somehow? There just had to be. They still didn't know what Merlyn and West and the others were looking for… Julian, they couldn't believe Julian was involved in this. They'd only heard once Ruby had gone off to bed.

The worst part was this feeling that, if everything was coming to an end, if they were no longer in need of this greatly deployed distraction of theirs… then it might mean that they had found what they were looking for. If that was true, then they might only be riding the calm before the storm and believing it a simple day at the beach instead.

X

 **HOME OF CAIT SNOW & RONNIE RAYMOND**

Wallace had not known for sure where he might find his sister now that he was free. According to John Diggle, she'd been staying at ARGUS headquarters the last few days, but when he and Ronnie had gone in looking for her, the clueless agent at reception – not knowing who he was speaking to – had simply said he'd seen her leave with 'Miss Snow.' So that had settled it. Here was Ronnie, not wanting to leave the guy to wander the city on his own, even if it mostly looked like his own, and as it turned out all he had to do was take him home with him.

Home… The closer they got to it, he felt his heart drumming so much he wondered if he would look like a cartoon character, his heart visibly beating from his chest. After all the fears he'd experienced, locked in that room, for his family more than himself, he was almost back to her. Wallace was feeling some of this, too, about seeing his sister again. It felt like they had so much to say to one another, so much to share…

Even as they approached the house they spotted someone sitting out on the porch and they stopped. Wallace turned to Ronnie, but _he_ was smiling as he recognized Amaya from a distance. They could see the moment she'd seen them come, with how she started to turn into Killer Frost, but then they passed under a streetlight and she stopped, reverting back to herself before sprinting down the steps to come up and meet them.

"Are you alright?" she asked, hugging Ronnie.

"All good," he promised. "This is Wallace…"

"West, I know, it's nice to finally meet you," Amaya turned to him, debating how to greet him before deciding on a handshake. "Your sister is here," she looked back toward the house.

"I heard. It's nice to meet you, too. Amaya, right?" She nodded.

"We had time to talk," Ronnie shrugged, the instinct to act calm not quite matching his performance of it. Understanding this, Amaya had led on as they went up to the house. "Holding guard?" Ronnie asked.

"Force of habit," she admitted as they walked through the door. She turned around, pointing to Wallace and indicating the living room, then pointing to Ronnie and indicating upstairs. They quietly thanked her and moved to their designated directions.

In the living room, Iris and Tommy were working together to set up their makeshift beds for the night. Amaya would bunk upstairs, leaving them the room. They were just recalling something that had happened when they were kids when Tommy paused, catching her eye and nodding for her to turn around. She frowned, turning, and she gasped, her hand flying to her mouth before dropping the blanket she'd been unfolding and quickly opening out her arms to wrap them around her baby brother.

"You're alright, you're… I thought…" She'd been playing brave all this time, trying not to lose focus, knowing what was at stake, but now… now she let it go and she felt heavy and light all at the same time. There was just so much… so much they had to talk about, but she didn't care about any of them now, not when he was here and he was safe. She pulled back, looking him over like she wanted to make sure he was still in one piece. She grasped his hands, seeing the bandages on most of his fingertips.

"It was stupid, I'll tell you later." She just smiled, looking up at him, and wondering how he got out. When she asked, she breathed out. John Diggle had done it, or at least he'd gotten them back most of the way. She'd have to thank him. "And the others? Ronnie?" she looked past him.

"He went upstairs," Wallace told his sister.

Ronnie had climbed up quietly, not wanting to startle her. This house, their house… Sometimes it still felt strange to think it was theirs, that they had made every choice of decoration, everything… Right now, it had never looked so wonderful. Their home, the three of them…

She was in their room. She was lying on their bed, but he could tell she was awake. The floor creaked under his foot as he moved forward, and she looked up, blindsided…

"Hey, Caity…" he felt his eyes brim over at once, walking up and sitting on the bed as she slipped into his arms, breaking down, too. He rubbed at her back, kissed the top of her head… The scent of her, the familiarity of it, was enough to feel the last of his anxiety melt away.

They stayed like this for a long time, neither speaking, neither moving. He had her, she had him, and it was enough for now. There'd be time for the rest later… he was back. When, finally, they pulled apart just a bit, he kissed her, and she cupped his face in her hands.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Stretch don't break," he reminded her, and it wrestled a laugh out of her. "I'm more concerned for how _you_ are," he went on, seeing the exhaustion in her features, in the way she sat…

"All's well," she assured him. "Both of us," she smiled. He breathed out, kissing her again.

"When this is all really over, good and over, we're going on vacation. Nice, peace and quiet, no breachers, no weird mirror rooms…" She frowned, not following on that. "I'll tell you all about it… on our vacation. Maybe a beach resort somewhere…"

"Count me in," she couldn't stop smiling through her tears.

When they had finally gone downstairs, they'd found the other four sitting around the kitchen, as Iris, Tommy, and Amaya told Wallace about all the things he'd missed. Cait and he were introduced to one another, and like any of them who'd been closely involved with Iris, with the missing people, she felt like she already knew him.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	47. DAY 094 (vol 2, ch 47)

_Day 94 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 47_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **HOME OF SAMANTHA & RUBY ARIAS**

Zari had fully expected not to be able to sleep after everything they'd gone through. But then Ruby had said she could take her bed (she would sleep with her mother, where Kendra would also bunk), and shortly after setting her head down, she was off in the land of dreams. Here again, she'd been sure that any dreams she'd have that night would be full of nightmares… but no. She'd slept so well that she might have thought the whole thing was a dream, if she hadn't turned around to look at the clock when she'd opened her eyes and ended up pressing on her burnt shoulder.

"Damn it!" she'd exclaimed, before turning back on her good side, covering her mouth as though it would take back the cry. A few seconds later, Samantha came and poked her head in.

"You alright?" she asked.

"I was, right up until…" she motioned to her shoulder.

"Maybe after today you can take a trip down to Fast Quarter for a few seconds," Samantha gave her a smirk.

"A few seconds in what now?" Zari asked, confused. Samantha explained about Raymond Palmer (the first time she heard his full name) and the arrow in his arm, how he'd been healed, and how she had borrowed his trick to let her leg heal from when he had shot her with his cold gun. "Woah…" Zari blinked, looking down to her friend's leg for a moment. "I might actually take you up on that."

"It's like going on vacation for a couple weeks, and you come back and it's been like a minute."

"Alright, stop selling already, I'm buying."

"Come on, breakfast is almost ready, we have to head back to headquarters."

X

 **HOME OF CAIT SNOW & RONNIE RAYMOND**

Ronnie had woken up in his own bed, staring at his sleeping wife, and if he couldn't feel the sun on his face he would have thought he was dreaming again. Back in that room, a lot of his dreams had looked like this. But this was real. When he reached out his hand, brushed hair from her face, it was real. And it made her open her eyes, and look at him, and smile… A lot of her dreams must have looked like this, too.

Heading down the stairs, they had found their house guests already busily organizing enough food to feed them and a few extras, too, if they decided to show. Ronnie did not miss those trays. It had never felt like a real meal back there, just food thrown their way so they wouldn't starve to death. It had made eating a duty more than anything.

The breakfast they had here was about much more than surviving. They sat around table, friends and colleagues, and even though they would have to go back out there, possibly having to fight again, right now, eating fluffy eggs and pancakes, they wouldn't think about anything else.

Ronnie looked to Wallace, sitting with his sister and Tommy, the three of them showing how far back they went together. He knew, from conversations in the room, that Wallace had been feeling sort of detached from his sister, from their friend, felt like they'd all drifted apart. You wouldn't know that here. Right now they were as close to the family they were meant to be as they could ever hope to be.

There would be things for them to discuss in time, subjects to settle, but this time was not that time. Wallace was happy, happier than Ronnie had ever known him, and he deserved that. They all did. After they'd all finished eating, they'd gotten ready to head out. The city was tentatively waking up this morning. There was a sense out there that things could start being normal again, but not everyone seemed willing to test it out, so most of them would keep on staying safely behind locked doors.

X

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

As they'd all started to show up on that fifth morning, the mood had changed drastically. It wasn't as though their jobs would go and become easy as they resumed the usual rhythm, but maybe they would no longer see the merit in complaining about difficulties quite so much as they might have done before.

They weren't there yet. Director Heywood would be addressing them momentarily. He wasn't even waiting until everyone had arrived, but then as far as his agents went, most of them were already in the building. The fact that the Green Arrow and her team, the Flash and Kid Flash, and the Waverider team all stood fairly together had nothing to do with isolation. If anything, the agents were as aware and as thankful as the director was about their involvement.

"Where are the others?" Thea asked her brother, looking around for Iris, and Cait, the girl and her mother, Jim, and Killer Frost… Before he could say anything, the director had come along and raised his hands so everyone would stop talking amongst themselves and listen to him.

"Good morning, everyone," he started. "For once, it might actually be that. A good morning," he nodded slowly before continuing. "As you will be aware, as of last night the maps have been clear, there have been no more intrusions or incidents." There was applause in a few places around the listeners. The director silenced them again. "That doesn't mean our work is done, as it stands, we…"

There had still been some low whisperings around him, traces of the applause, but almost all at once they faded away, and he looked around to see what had caused it.

The heroes, the Waverider team, they all looked on, too, as they were joined by a few late arrivals, primarily Iris, and Cait, and Jim, and Samantha, and Amaya, and Tommy, and Ruby, and Lisa… and Zari Tomaz, Wallace West, Ronnie Raymond, and Kendra Saunders. Now the applause resumed, but for a whole new reason. The missing had been found, they were back, safe and sound…

"Alright, this is what we're going to do," Director Heywood addressed those gathered around him. "Get out there, patrol the city, see if anything is standing out. I will contact you with your next assignments as soon as I speak with Miss Tomaz, Miss Saunders, Mr. West, and Mr. Raymond."

X

The four of them now sat in the director's office, facing his desk. He simply looked glad, relieved to see that they had been freed. They had already informed him that both Carter and Mag were also safe and that they were in War with the others by now. He should be able to reach them through the Waverider if he needed to speak with them.

"For the sake of transparency, and because I'm sure that if you haven't heard by now someone is bound to tell you eventually, you should know that one of the men who took you three…" he gestured to Zari, Ronnie, and Kendra, "… is my grandson, Nathaniel Heywood."

He might have knocked them across the face and they wouldn't have been as stunned.

"He's what now? The guy who…" Zari pointed to her shoulder.

"Yes," the director confirmed, before giving them a brief rundown of his history in Slow Quarter, his son's relocation and so forth. He also told them about how both Nate and Raymond had briefly been caught, only to be busted out by Lyra Star, Lily Stein, and Jesse Wells, the last of which had taken the liberty of murdering two of his guards in the process. They had not been told about any of this, and much as they understood the reason why, it still felt like they should have known.

Next he told them about the things they had learned regarding the people behind all these attacks, the breacher invasion, the Mist weapon on Breach, and their kidnappings. At least, he started to, before Wallace cut him off.

"I know my father is involved," he told the director. "And Tommy's dad. There's also a man, he's from Future, his name is…"

"Vandal Savage, yes, we learned as much. Have you met this man before?" Henry asked, leaning forward.

"Sort of… it's complicated," Wallace tried not to look intimidated. That wasn't him, really, it wasn't, but the subject of his father was a complicated one, and it would do this to him, almost without fail.

"There are two others we were able to identify," Henry told him. The four of them remembered this, when Mag had sensed five people behind the glass. They had been able to identify Merlyn, and Savage, and of course Joseph West. But the other two, beyond Main Earth and War Quarter, and male on both counts, they'd had nothing. "One of them is a man by the name of Julian Albert, a local to Main and, so we've learned, with a connection to one of our allies here, Samantha Arias."

This was met with varying degrees of familiarity. Zari and Kendra already knew, of course, if only since the night before. Wallace did not know her at all, while Ronnie had met and worked alongside her in this situation, up until he'd been taken. To him alone the revelation from the director carried any weight. He looked to Zari and Kendra, catching their somber faces. Now Ronnie understood what the director had delicately referred to as 'a connection.' They'd been involved… He was Ruby's father, wasn't he?

"And the last one?" Wallace asked. The director let out a breath at this.

"An urban legend made real, by the sound of it. He is what the people in War refer to as 'the Enemy.'" Zari sat up at this.

"Wait, what?" The director looked to her. "You can't be serious, he's not real, he's…"

"I assure you, Miss Tomaz, he's very real. Also, immortal, by the sound of it, which is what allowed him to go around and allow people to assume he was only a story, a figurehead. The team from the Waverider should be able to fill you in… or maybe he can," the director looked to Wallace, who'd been quietly sinking into his chair since the name of the Enemy had been mentioned.

"Wallace?" Zari looked at him.

"I've seen him," he confirmed to the director. "I don't know if I've seen that Albert guy, but I've seen the rest. I think… I think that's why I was taken, so I couldn't tell you… I might be able to tell you where they're hiding out."

X

For once, his sister having 'gotten really into computers' paid off. For a while the two of them sat side by side at a computer station. Wallace would tell her what he knew, and she would type it out, while also creating a map from the locations he told her about. At this point, it was all about his giving her what he knew and letting her put it into context. Once they had it all put together, he'd be able to step back and figure out how to point them in the right direction.

Both Ronnie and Kendra had left headquarters and gone out to join in the patrol of the city with their respective teams. Zari remained here, figuring she might be able to lend a hand much better here than anywhere else.

She was watching the map that was being put together when she heard the click of heels walking in her direction and turned to find a relieved looking Nora Allen walking toward her. As surprised as she was to see the woman, the surprises kept on coming as she received a hug, the kind one might get from a worried parent, which she guessed that was what Nora Allen was, even though Zari wasn't the kid she was worried about… not entirely.

"I heard you were here," Nora told her.

"How?" Zari frowned, surprised once again.

"Oh, I bribed the man at reception to call me if he heard anything about your case," she explained offhandedly. Zari was still riding that surprise, thinking that her disappearance might have meant that much to her. "Are you alright? I saw that video from outside my building, that man and…" her eyes flicked to Zari's shoulder.

"All things considered, pretty good." She wasn't about to go into details about any lasting trauma she might come to discover in the long run.

"That's excellent," Nora nodded, and Zari deduced from the tone of her voice that it was more than excellent. She really had worried, and maybe it had something to do with the fact that Zari had been taken from right outside her building, or maybe she'd just really taken a shine to the young reporter, something that became more and more of a likely hypothesis when Nora Allen followed this up with a job offer.

"I… I sort of have a job already, with the newspaper," she had to remind her.

"Of course, and I understand that, but if at any time you find you're looking for a change, I want you to know that my door is open. I look at you, Miss Tomaz, and I see great potential. I like to encourage that in people. Keep that in mind."

"I will," Zari was stunned, smiling. They shook hands, and Nora Allen went on her way, clicking heels still retreating even as…

"There," Wallace pointed to a spot on the map. Zari blinked, turning back to him as Iris stood up from her chair to look with him.

"Are you sure?" Iris asked.

"As much as I'll ever be. Maybe they're not there, but the way I see it, they took me because I could lead you to them, and _that's_ the place that seems most likely to me."

"Well, when you put it like that," Iris let out a breath before reaching to put in a call to the director.

X

 **BREACH EARTH, HAVEN QUARTER**

The team that would sail off to the location Wallace West had given them was, for the most part, identical to the one that had gone on to Breach Earth the day before. Leonard Snart piloted the jump ship, carrying as his passengers Tommy, Felicity, Dinah, Lyla, Sara, Michael, Oliver, and – this time around – Wallace West himself. He had insisted. Tommy might get to face his father, and Wallace wanted that same chance, no matter what.

Iris had looked upset at him for going, though he knew it was only her showing how she cared for him. She had only just gotten him back, and she wasn't going to lose him again.

To Wallace, it had been good to see it, if he could say it that way. To be perfectly honest, he was terrified about going out there, seeking out his father like that. For some time now, Joseph West had been attempting to bring his son 'into the family business,' which apparently now revolved on doing very dangerous things that put countless people in danger of dying.

Wallace had always refused him, categorically, giving not the slightest opening that would indicate he secretly wanted any of this, that he was playing hard to get. But still his father would not relent. Because of that, he had taken him along to certain places, to meet certain people. This was before Wallace had finally completely severed ties with him, even though his father continued to refuse to take the hint.

If his father had known better, he might not have shown him any of these places, definitely wouldn't have allowed him to be able to locate them on a map. But he had, and because of that Wallace had been held captive for four days. He knew by now that, if he hadn't escaped, he never would have gotten out of there. He was too dangerous, he knew too much.

So now that he was out, and free… he felt like being very dangerous… to his father's freedom. Getting Joseph West off the streets of Haven sounded like a very good use of his time and knowledge.

They had come upon the location before long, joined by a couple of detectives, Dahrk and Garrick. They couldn't let anyone inside know that they were coming. They were able to make breaches, they could disappear just like that, and if they did then it would be over, no catching them again, ever.

Even though he had been allowed to come, Wallace was forced to stay behind as the others moved forward. A scan had confirmed there were two people inside. As before – and this time intentionally – it would be a tag team of Supergirl and the Flash going in, the better to get at the two of them before it was too late.

They looked to one another, nodding as they prepared to speed off as soon as the detectives said go. When the time came, they went in without hesitation, Supergirl preceding only so long as to break through the window first… only to crash to a stop, just as the Flash did, as they hit what they realized to be a smaller version of the field previously created around Laurel Lance's building. They didn't have their powers in here… but then neither did Malcolm Merlyn.

He was there, the second time in as many days they found him, only this time he wasn't alone. He was sitting across from a man who had to be Iris and Wallace's father.

For once, _for once_ , they genuinely looked like they hadn't expected the arrival, although they must have expected _something_ , if they had thrown up that field, preventing anything from working so far as powers and the like, even if it meant one of them would be affected, too.

"Mr. Merlyn," Oliver gritted his teeth as he stood up. "Mr. West. Fancy meeting you here, isn't it?"

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	48. DAY 096 (vol 2, ch 48)

_Day 96 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 48_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

The city was coming back to life. More and more people were leaving their homes, walking about… There were still many signs of the struggles of the past few days, a lot of destruction in need of fixing. But there was a definitive drive in all of them to get their lives back in rhythm. It would take some time before everyone started going to work again, sending their kids to school, doing their shopping, going to the movies… They were starting, and that was more than enough for today.

At ARGUS, there was still this sort of held breath in them, as though they took the responsibility of that worry away from the people of the city so they could go about resuming their lives. Of course, the people in the city, for the most part, remained unaware of a lot of what had been happening out there while they were – mostly – staying away. Others had wanted to carry on as though it was all good and fine and ended up in some trouble for it. Thank goodness for heroes then, yes?

Iris West continued to occupy her borrowed station, although for the most part it was so that she could follow the developments out there, hearing from various teams patrolling the city.

It was all so different for them, too. Cait, sitting nearby, still wore that smile about her, like it was stuck to her face. Ronnie was back, he was fine. Iris had tried so much to comfort her in the time of Ronnie's disappearance, but she knew there would be nothing strong enough to erase the worry from her face except for his return. Looking at her face this morning, she saw how right she'd been. Everyone sort of had a version of that today, with the return of their people…

Everyone, but not her, not at this moment.

Her brother was back in Haven right now, with the Green Arrow, and the Flash, and Supergirl… looking for their father. She'd just gotten him back, and he had to go out there. Sure, she understood why he needed to do it, and she also knew he could take care of himself, on the whole, but… this didn't feel like something he would get out of, if things really went sideways.

"I think we'll have to leave soon." She looked up to find Ruby standing next to her. She looked a load happier, too, now that her 'aunts' had returned. Iris smiled back at her.

"Why?" she asked.

"Well, it's all over, isn't it? We're not usually supposed to be here, are we?" Ruby shrugged.

"Maybe not, although who knows. Someday you could be an agent just like them… unless you see yourself going more into your mom's line of work," she gave her a pointed look, making her laugh.

They still hadn't told her about the thing with her father, and Iris wondered if Samantha ever would. On the one hand, she could understand why she wouldn't want to have her daughter be aware of something like that, but on the other… secrets had a way of making things worse.

"Maybe," Ruby just laughed. "But when we go, it's just… You're from that other Earth, aren't you?"

"I am," Iris confirmed.

"So, we're not going to see you again?" Ruby looked sad now, and Iris had to smile, getting up from her chair to hug her.

"I'm sure we can work something out, you and me. Just you wait."

X

 **BREACH EARTH, HAVEN QUARTER**

 **THE BREACH SHIP WAVERIDER'S JUMP SHIP**

Wallace West was pacing the floor of the jump ship. He'd tried sitting and it was simply no good. He couldn't do it. Was it some kind of after effect from being trapped in that room all week, or was it that he knew his father was out there right now? He couldn't say, maybe it was both. He was all on his own in here, and he knew himself to well to think that sooner or later he would fail to resist the urge to go out there, to get involved. He had to stay here, he had to. _Do it for Iris._

Eventually he went and sat down at the controls, looking at all that he saw before him. Maybe there was something here that could… _Communication link._ They all had something, the ones that were out there, they had earbuds and all that. He could talk to them, or maybe he could listen in.

Most of the others were standing out there with the cops, but Supergirl and the Flash had gone in, crashing through the window and everything. The active buds were not identified as anything except being active, except for the one that belonged to Leonard Snart, which he guessed made sense. The rest of them were spares. So now he only had to find the one that either belonged to the alien girl or the speedster. He tapped the first one and listened… No… Second one? No. Third?

X

Supergirl had not expected for this technology to affect her. She wasn't a metahuman, she didn't have some magic tool, she was an alien, and her powers came from the sun… yet this thing made her feel at once vulnerable and powerless from the moment she'd crashed through that window. If she needed proof, she needed only to look at the scratches on her arms… She was bleeding. She couldn't let anyone see that this was in any way out of the ordinary, although if anyone would know…

"Yes, _Supergirl_ , even you and I," Malcolm Merlyn told her, an amused smile on his face as he answered the question she had not asked. "Though I'm sure it's even stranger for the likes of you."

"You know, for a guy who can't run away right now, you're really not understanding the situation very well," she replied.

"Is this the girl that's been chasing you across the galaxy?" Joseph West inquired. Sitting in his chair the way he did, he looked as though there should have been a roaring fireplace behind him, while a butler brought him his drink. It said plenty about what he thought of them.

"The very one," Malcolm told him. "Yet here I am."

"Are the two of you looking to start up some comedy act or something, because so far I'm really not feeling it," the Flash told the two men.

"As it turns out, we're not exactly in a laughing mood ourselves," Malcolm told him.

Standing outside, the rest of the team could only listen in for the time being. The Green Arrow and Spartan had explained to the detectives about the device Merlyn and West had in there. It was already something that the comms continued to work. So, for the time being, no one was to approach or attempt to enter, although Tommy Merlyn looked like he was just itching to go in and share some words with his good old dad. Hearing him talk was not helping.

"Something doesn't feel right," Michael was saying, and Tommy turned back, finding him addressing Sara, Dinah, and Lyla.

"Trap?" Dinah asked.

"No," Michael shook his head, still staring at the building, the gaping window. "They're keeping up appearances, but they really didn't expect us."

"So why the field around them?" Sara understood. From what they heard through their comms, it sounded like Oliver had come to the same conclusion.

"Does it have anything to do with that Future field around here?" he asked, rotating his finger around the room. "What's the matter, you're not into visitors?" he asked.

He really wished it wasn't this that had given Malcolm away, but he'd made a face and right then and there all Oliver could think about was Thea. She had so much of their mother in her, but _this_ … This she'd gotten from him. She had that look whenever he would get too close to hitting the nail on the head with something he said. After that, the pieces fell into place easily enough.

"Or are you trying to keep some people away from you?" The look was still there, but it felt like he was getting closer. Supergirl figured it out first, and she chuckled.

"They double-crossed you, didn't they? Albert, Savage, Holt?" she asked. And the hammer met the nail.

They weren't saying anything. They were probably thinking about what manner they would use for getting away from the two of them, if they would go the way of trading blows or not. Knowing how both Felicity and Oliver were presently powerless and might not know how to fight that well without those powers, it would have been all too easy, especially against Joseph.

Outside, Tommy looked to the detectives. He didn't care what they said, one way or the other, he was going to get in there, but he preferred to go at it with respect if he could. Detective Garrick sighed, giving him a nod. He didn't wait for him to change his mind. He hurried across the street, shooting out a line and, once it had locked into position, he was pulled up. Within seconds, he dropped in through the broken window and landed between Supergirl and the Flash.

"Morning," he nodded before pulling off his helmet.

"Nice friends you've got here, Tommy," Malcolm told his son, standing from where he sat.

"Really? From where I'm standing, I don't see you being one to talk about the company _I_ keep," Tommy glared back at him before turning to greet… "Mr. West," he tipped his head.

"Thomas," he replied. Tommy chuckled.

"Yeah, still annoys me when you do that."

"How are my kids?" he asked.

"Oh, you know, wishing they weren't related to you, same as usual. We have that in common," he turned back to his father. "If we can move on from all that, what happened with the others?"

X

 **THE BREACH SHIP WAVERIDER'S JUMP SHIP**

 _"How are my kids?"_

Wallace could feel his heart going fast in his chest. His hand went to his neck, finding the chain Iris had insisted to put around there before he left Main. It usually sat around _her_ neck, holding their mother's ring. He knew why she'd put it there. A reminder. _Keep calm, Wallace, don't do anything stupid._ He was still sitting here, so it must have worked, right?

In those words, he knew that, while his father and Malcolm Merlyn hadn't seen them coming but, now that they were there, he knew how they'd found him. He knew Wallace was back safe with his sister, with them, and he'd told them where to find him. But he'd also brought up Iris in the process, said it to Tommy, and while Wallace was sure… fairly sure… that their father would never allow anything or anyone to get close to her, maybe he wanted to seed some doubt in Tommy's mind, to trigger him.

"Don't rile him up," he mumbled to himself. "Just get it done." He had forgotten about the comm link, and the fact that they might be able to hear him, too, until Oliver said his name out loud.

"Wallace?" He'd said it sort of low, surprised, but the room had to be tensely quiet enough that everyone heard, including Joseph. He had to think fast. This might have been his only shot.

"Give him your earbud," Wallace told Oliver. There was hesitation. "Please?" Several seconds went by, with nothing but ambient sounds, and then…

"Hello, son."

He held the chained ring in both his palms, almost in prayer, to his sister, to the… ghost of his mother… His pillars to keep him strong.

"You need to put an end to this," Wallace's voice came forward, solid, unwavering. "Turn yourself in, it's over."

"In all our years together, have I ever given you the impression that I would ever do anything like that?" They couldn't see each other, and it still felt like his father's gaze was boring holes into him.

"No, I guess not. You're more the kind to have your son kidnapped and held prisoner so he won't be able to give you up."

"See how well _that_ turned out. There's still time, Wallace."

"To do what? Join you? I'm not doing that." Silence. "You stood there, in that room. You stood there, and you watched me, sitting down there with the other people you all had get taken, too. And if you ever tell me that you did it because you didn't have a choice or because it was for my own good, then you really haven't been paying attention. I am done with you, I have _been_ done with you. I've been putting my life together without you and doing just fine. And you know something else? Mom would be ashamed of you… She'd be ashamed."

He didn't so much press the key to end the comm link as slap his whole hand against it. When the light turned off, he got up from his seat, pacing the length of the jump ship, breathing… It had felt good to say what he'd had to say, but it only came at the expense of his having to live with the pain, too. Whatever happened next, he'd said his part.

X

No one else had heard what Wallace had told his father, only him. Tommy, Oliver, Felicity, even Malcolm, had watched him the whole time, and there was no doubt the man had to be a solid poker player, because his face gave nothing away. When he pulled the earbud out and held it out to Oliver again, that was the only way they knew the conversation had ended.

"Now I don't know what you kids expected to happen, showing up here like this, but let me make something clear," Joseph West looked back up to them. "I'm not going anywhere with you. I don't need powers to take you down." The change in his posture was so smooth, simple but clear. He was ready to go at them.

Oliver's gaze turned to the two at his side. Tommy only had eyes for his father, waiting to see what he would do. Felicity was looking at Joseph West as though she had identified him as the biggest threat and was now considering her course of action if she was to fight without her abilities. The only thing Oliver could think was _we need to get out of here._ There was no way this would end well if they fought like this.

The others outside must have thought the same thing, because that was the moment the door busted open. It wasn't the detectives at the front, but rather the Green Arrow and Spartan, and they didn't wait one second before going for Joseph and Malcolm respectively.

"We need to find what's generating that field," Tommy looked to the powerless Supergirl and Flash.

"No," Felicity shook her head. "So long as they're in here like this, your father doesn't have his speed, and that's a good thing."

"And whatever's got them so worried about the other three, we don't need them showing up here right now."

"Vandal Savage is from Future, he would know how to bypass this, wouldn't he?" Felicity wondered.

"They don't seem to think he can," Tommy shrugged.

'They' were still fighting, and neither Sara nor Michael was making it easy for them. It seemed for a moment like they might actually get the upper hand on them, but then there was the one thing they could do, wasn't there? They barely had the time to realize Malcolm had deactivated the field before he had gone and grabbed Joseph and run them both out of the room, sending their opponents sprawling.

"Go!" Sara shouted, and the Flash sped off, Supergirl on his heels.

It was ten minutes before the two of them returned… empty handed. Malcolm had breached out before they could follow. By the time they'd manage to try and track them it would already be too late, the trail would be gone.

The group returned to the jump ship, finding Wallace had stopped his pacing but generally looked like he was still doing it in his head. When he saw them, he sprang to his feet, looking at all of them.

"Did you…"

"They got away," Tommy told him, and he sat back down.

"Was it my fault? What I said to him…"

"Don't worry about it. Whatever you did say, he probably had it coming," Felicity told him. He gave a nod. Part of him knew she was right, but it still felt like, for all the time he'd spent in that room, thinking about what he'd do if he ever got out, he had missed his chance. He could have gone out there with them, he could have done something, but… He could feel the coolness of metal at his neck, the presence of the chain, the ring… No. He'd done exactly what he was supposed to do. It was only that, sometimes, it just wasn't enough. His father was beyond that.

He had meant what he'd told his father about his mother, and it wasn't as though he went around thinking that his father wasn't aware of this, deep down. On the surface, he was probably telling himself he had all the reasons in the world, that this _was_ right, but that would only work so far. Sooner or later, if they scratched deep enough, he would hit that part where he knew the real truth. And Wallace had just made his father go digging.

As the jump ship took off, to return to Main, he reminded himself they were headed to find Iris again, and he focused on that. He'd have to tell her how it had gone, but he knew she, more than anyone, would understand how he felt.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	49. DAY 098 (vol 2, ch 49)

_Day 98 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 49_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

Looking at the house from the outside, no one would have imagined what was to be found inside. John Diggle would have been one of those people, too. He had looked at the house the day before, and it had looked normal, not even the kind of normal that made you suspicious because there had to be something wrong.

But then after he'd gotten the six of them away from the place, they had told him about what it had been like, told him about that room where they'd been held in great detail… They'd had more than enough time to inspect it, hadn't they?

He was back at that house now. He walked through the door, no locks, nothing, already telling him enough to foresee what he would find inside, or, to the point, what he wouldn't find. There was nothing left, the entire place stripped, not that there had been that much there to begin with, the parts of it that the six had seen on their way out. Still, there was not one thing in that place, top to bottom.

In time, possibly, the police or ARGUS would descend on this place and inspect it just as he had done, in some attempt to track down the kidnappers. If it was in any way up to him, Deathstroke would find them first. They'd done more than to kidnap those six. And for all they'd orchestrated, all the attacks, all the deaths, the injuries, the one thing that drove him above all else to track them down was the same one that had always motivated him, the thing that always ran the risk of sending him over the edge.

They had put his family in harm's way.

X

 **BREACH EARTH, HAVEN QUARTER**

 **POLICE PRECINCT**

It would be a few days more before they would give the okay, telling them that they no longer needed to wear masks. The process of decontamination had started, and it was progressing. They could probably have taken the masks away already, but for what the poison had done to everyone in here, no one was taking chances.

It was little more than a skeleton crew who had been allowed back into the building, to see to the process of getting everything and everyone back on their feet. They would need new blood in here, replacing all the good people they'd lost, and it might have seemed as though no one would even want to be here after what had happened, that they'd rather tear the building down and start fresh than to be reminded of everyone dropping dead where they'd stood…

Instead, they were finding a thriving recruitment in progress. Some other precincts were offering transfers to help fill in their ranks. The police academy was seeing to fast tracking some of their most promising future officers, and they were seeing more people seeking to sign up. The attacks on their city may not have been as intense as those that had happened in War, but it didn't matter. The people were not sitting back, not now.

Lyla Michaels had been one of those to return into the building that day. She had only just returned from Main, and she fully intended to take the paid vacation that was being offered to her, while they dealt with the aftermath of the attack on the precinct. She would go and spend time with the twins, just be a mom for a while, freeing her mind from the events of the past week, but before she could do that, she just… she had to see it.

She didn't know how she knew, maybe because a part of her always seemed to know, but when she went down to her CSI lab, she stopped at the door with an even look as she found her ex husband waiting for her there. He had a mask of his own.

"This place is still quarantined, I don't even want to know how you got in this time," she told him. She knew what he had done, how he had been instrumental to the return of all those people who'd been kidnapped, but it was just stronger than her. She would see him, and her reflex would be to go on the defensive. Taking a breath, reminding herself of what he'd done yesterday, she restarted. "Thank you for bringing them home."

"It was the least I could do," he told her. She stared at him, telling herself that the mask would hide any telltale facial ticks from the nose down though it wouldn't be able to do anything for her eyes and how well he could read those if she wasn't careful.

"And are you going to make me say it?" she asked him.

"You mean 'this doesn't change anything,' right?"

"What else would I say? John… No matter what I do, I will never be able to forget what you've done before, and I try, I do. I just can't go back."

"I know. And I'm not asking you to." He said nothing after that, though she could read _him_ pretty well, too, she knew there was more he wanted to say, but he kept it to himself.

So, they left it there, for now. They both knew better than to think it would be the last time they did this dance. Much as they tried, they couldn't seem to say away from one another for too long. She would think of him, every time she saw him in their children's faces, and he would wonder if he'd ever let her in on the fact that he had known about the twins since just before their birth.

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

 **ARGUS HEADQUARTERS**

They were headed back home, most of them the same way they'd come. With her brother and Tommy at her side, Iris West was bound for Haven once more, following along with Robert and Moira Queen.

While the Queens _were_ returning to Haven, they had already informed the three of them that they were doing so solely with the intent of starting the process of relocation here on Main, so they might be closer to their children. The Queen were cared for by all of them, but it was clear that Iris would be the one most affected by their departure. For all that had been happening with her father over the years, these two had been the family she'd needed.

"This is not goodbye," Moira had promised her after they'd told her, seeing the look on her face. Given more time she might have realized this was bound to happen even before it ever did, but there had been so much going on and so she had been blindsided by the news.

"I know," she'd promised, willing herself to smile. She really just hated to think about how her father was still out there, what he might do next, him and Tommy's dad…

Oliver and Thea were coming along to help their parents out with the relocation, and so they waited together, the seven of them, until they could be taken through the breach. Iris was getting the sense, looking at them, that Tommy and Thea were really trying to get to know each other, as friends first, maybe, before siblings.

It was strange for both of them, but then if Iris and Tommy had been bonded by their 'Bad Dad Club,' then Thea had more than earned her spot. They could recruit Ruby Arias while they were at it, though until she actually knew about her father's involvement…

As much as they all talked together as they waited, it got to feel like they were all thinking about one thing and trying very hard not to bring it up. She could see it in the way their eyes would sweep off into a moment just thinking to themselves before looking back to the rest of them.

They were all thinking about what had happened with Malcolm and Joseph earlier, the implications brought on by the supposed double-crossing from their other partners. What had they been after that was so important to mount this massive distraction campaign? Had they finally given up on it, or had they actually found it and _that_ was why everything had stopped?

All of them, not just the seven of them, were hoping to put the entire matter behind them, to move forward with their lives and not constantly have to look over their shoulders, but… wouldn't that be prudent? So long as they were out there, so long as the question remained unanswered, there was always this possibility that something might happen, to them or to people they cared about.

X

The ship that had brought the three of them to Earth, before they had taken on the names of Felicity Smoak, Roy Harper, and Rory Regan, now sat far away from anywhere it might be found, in what had become a place of solace for them, to get away from the double lives and the secrets, and just remember who they were and where they'd come from.

That was where they'd gone that day, as they'd left ARGUS headquarters. After spending years believing that they would never get their chance at capturing Merlyn and bringing him back the way they'd been supposed to, many more years ago… they'd had a chance. And they had failed.

They could blame the circumstances all they liked, but the fact was that he continued to be out there, and for that they would shoulder the blame without shame, their captain most of all.

The circumstances were gone now. The breacher problem, the grenade problem, the kidnapping problem, that was done, and going forward they knew what they had to do. They had to find Malcolm Merlyn, and once and for all they had to capture him.

They had duties to the city, they knew, and they weren't forgetting those, but they had to set a priority on the thing that had brought them here in the first place. They had to go back to the beginning, remember the people they had been before they'd come to Earth. _Those_ people were supposed to be the best in their field, but somewhere along the way they had forgotten how to be those people. It was time to remember.

X

 **HOME OF QUENTIN LANCE**

It had been at his youngest's request that Quentin Lance briefly left behind the Waverider and the rest of his team to go and spend some time with his daughters. Five days ago, the dynamics of their family had been something they no longer were today and, now that the dust had settled, they really just needed to take a moment to explore what that would mean.

He arrived to find the two of them sitting in his kitchen, talking, of all things, about archery. It seemed that Laurel wanted to understand how her sister was able to shoot the way she did, while Sara, after dreading her being pushed aside if the truth ever got it, looked all too happy to give her a rundown of what she knew. It was a far cry from the things they used to discuss as kids, but it made him smile as much as their talking about games and cartoons ever did.

They would talk on and on like it was any old day, but when you looked at them you couldn't help but pick up on the marks of what they'd been through over the week. The bandage might not have shown under her shirt, but he could see in Sara's movements how the wound at her side still dictated some of her movements when she wasn't forced to grit her teeth through the pain and do what was needed anyway. The bandages on Laurel's wrists, from the press of those cuffs, were very visible for their part, and she didn't gesture with her hands nearly as openly as she usually would.

Sitting down with them, it felt very much as though a weight had been lifted. He didn't know what the future would bring for them, whether it would be good or not, but after everything their family had gone through over the years, the fact that they could be sitting here now, Quentin, his girls, all of them happy for one another's presence, to him it said so much on the bond that they shared.

X

Cisco walked into his apartment for what felt like the first time in forever, having spent the last several nights camped out at the clocktower more than anything else. There was no mountain of mail – the postal service had taken a backseat to the breacher invasion, by the looks of it – but there _was_ an answering machine's worth of messages from his mother, asking where he was and why he wasn't calling her at what could only be called an increasing level of frantic blame. By the end of it, she seemed to have convinced herself he had forgotten she even existed.

He also found Cynthia, standing there and perusing his bookshelf. He froze when he saw her.

"You have a lot of books about dragons," she commented.

"Well… sure… who wouldn't?" he slowly replied. She turned back to him with a pensive frown. Alright, maybe _she_ wouldn't. "I have a pretty good idea about _how_ you got in, but what I don't know is why you're here, breaking into my apartment and critiquing my choice of literature." She set the book she'd been inspecting back in its place on the shelf before taking a few steps toward him.

"It dawned on me that perhaps the two of us didn't part on the most… ideal of terms. I wanted to rectify that," she explained.

Cisco did not know what to do with this. Despite the multiple instances of Sin's teasing him about it, and his refuting every part of it, he really did feel something for this woman, now more than ever. It could have been that the time they'd actually spent working side by side the last few days would have had the opposite effect. More than once she had taken a step back and chosen to do her own thing.

That might have made him reconsider, but to him it wasn't so much that she'd leave, it was that she always came back. It could have been for the fact that the city needed all the help it could get, but he was very aware that she wouldn't get involved if she decided she didn't want or need to, no matter what was happening. She'd stayed this time. She'd leave, but she'd return. She'd just done it again.

"How… how would you like to rectify that exactly?" he tentatively asked. She smiled.

"I believe your city is not nearly as through with its troubles as it might seem. I will stay, for now, and, as it happens, I need a place to stay." He coughed.

"I have a spare bedroom…" he pointed, and she tipped her head.

"And many books about dragons."

X

 **THE BREACH SHIP WAVERIDER**

While there would have been no way for her to go back into hiding if she had wanted to, Catherine Grant had insisted that she would be satisfied staying right where she was, living in her rooms down in the ship. The only difference here of course would be that her door would be visible to the rest of the team, and they would be able to visit her.

This was what Leonard Snart did, now that they were all back, or they had been. Quentin had gone home to be with his daughters, Lucy, Ava, and Winn had gone to call on the families of the two guards who'd been killed at headquarters, Rip and Gideon were taking things easy after their fight with the Horus soldiers… He had questions for their surprise twelfth teammate, and now was as good of a time as any to ask them.

Catherine let him in, offering for him to take a seat. He took a curious look around, couldn't help it. As clean as it was, he could see how it had been adjusted over time to fit her needs as a sort of stowaway. That wasn't what held his attention the most however. What did take the prize in that category were some words, sort of melted into the walls like someone had taken a torch to them. _GET HIM HOME,_ with a symbol underneath _._

"I don't know if I believe in prophecy, but that right there might be as close as I ever will," Catherine told him. He looked at her. "The night you broke into this ship, and I watched you, and I first pretended to be 'Cat the artificial intelligence,'" she intoned, " _That_ happened. Eventually, I realized that my inspiration for this ship, these stories I'd once read about of a ship called the Waverider… was _this_ ship. So, I… borrowed… the time ship and went to leave myself a message. And I got you home, Mr. Snart."

He took a seat, feeling his head work through the loop she was describing like it would leave him dizzy.

"Tell me something," he looked at her as she came to sit across from him. "You're from the future. Not that strange, displaced time in Future Quarter, but _our_ future." She let out a breath like she already knew where this was going. He forged ahead anyway. "Do you know how this turns out? Holt, and Savage, and Albert, Merlyn and West… What do they do now?"

"Mr. Snart," she sat forward, trying to find the right words. "If I did know, I probably still wouldn't tell you. You don't make time ships and disregard the laws of time. It's a complicated road to navigate, but this much I know. You have to trust your instincts, they will tell you what you can and can't do, and this… this I can't do."

He considered this for a moment, looking at her.

"You do know, don't you?" he asked. She didn't say anything, and he knew she wouldn't, no matter how hard he pressed her on it. He breathed out, sitting back. He had a bad feeling he would have regretted asking her to say anything if she did tell him.

* * *

 _TO BE CONTINUED (tomorrow, in volume 1)_


	50. DAY 100 (vol 2, ch 50)

_Day 100 of 100_

 _Volume 2, Chapter 50_

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**  
 **(ARGUS designation)**

 **HOME OF SAMANTHA & RUBY ARIAS**

For how much she had not wanted to have Ruby find out what she did out there with Jim and Kendra and the others, Samantha had discovered a side of her daughter in those four and a half days that she would never give back. The only downside had been, in the long run, that after getting to spend most of that time at ARGUS headquarters, and getting to participate in the process as much as she was allowed – and that was already much more than she might have expected at her age – now that it was over, she would walk around like everything else the world had to offer was not good enough anymore.

"Hey, come on," she laughed as she leaned over the kitchen island, getting at eye level with the twelve-year-old. "I get that this was probably way more exciting than school, but that can't be every day. You need to just be a kid sometimes, because that's what you are now, and believe me, it'll be over sooner than you realize.

Ruby looked up at her, her eyes saying 'I know,' but the rest of her face still saying 'Can't I just go back?'

"You get to go back to school tomorrow, finally, that'll be good," Samantha tried to cheer her up.

"But I don't get to tell them what I did," Ruby countered. That was true. Before she'd left, the director had made it a point to remind her that everything that happened in headquarters was to be kept private. Ruby might not have been about bragging, but it was still one of the best times of her life, mixed up with the worst as it was.

"So you have a secret identity," Samantha told her. "Maybe we need to find _you_ a name, too. Personally, I'm very attached to 'Squeaks,'" she whispered. A laugh, victory!

"Squeaks?" Ruby repeated, still laughing.

"When you were a baby, all little in my arms, and you'd sneeze, you would make these little squeaky sounds like this…" her mother explained before giving a quick imitation. Another laugh.

"Not Squeaks," Ruby insisted.

"Fine, fine," Samantha sighed, 'disappointed.' "We'll just have to find you another one later."

X

 **BREACH EARTH, HAVEN QUARTER**

After spending a little over a week in Haven, Thea was finally headed back to Main, along with Oliver, and along with their parents. Everything was in order here, and from what they'd been hearing, Anatoly had been preparing for his old friends' arrival on his side, too. It was finally happening, and she couldn't wait… They were coming home. They were all going home.

Yet for all her excitement about her parents, there was one thing she wasn't looking forward to. All this time she had been in Haven with them, she'd been getting to know Iris and Wallace West, and she'd been getting to know her half-brother Tommy. They had all been growing stronger as friends, her and the Wests, sure, but it was with Tommy that she'd unexpectedly found a very easy friendship was starting to form.

She didn't know why, but she had been sure that bonding with this brother she had never known, from the father she hadn't known was hers and who had done so many terrible things, was going to be very hard, if not entirely impossible. But then he would be funny, and he'd listen to her, and help her, and… and she would look at him and just see in his eyes how much he was feeling it, too. They were becoming family without hardly trying.

There was one subject she had been meaning to talk to him about, so many times, and she still hadn't done it, but now… Now she was leaving soon, and she didn't want to let another chance go by. It was only a curiosity, really, and it might end up that they brushed over the whole thing and moved on, but she had to ask. So, she'd gone to meet him, and they had started on a walk, coffee in hand.

"Can I ask you something? And, really, feel free to just… brush me off or something," she insisted. He smirked.

"That bad, huh?"

"It's just… You know Slade Wilson, from the Waverider? He came over to Main near the end to help us out."

"The speedster, yeah, I remember," he nodded.

"Right." She paused. "The thing is, he wasn't born a speedster. He got it after an incident in a lab. They've never been able to get it to happen the same way it did for him, all the others who tried, they just… well, they died in the end," she explained, bowing her head. Maybe this was a bad idea. Well, she'd gone this far, hadn't she? "I was just wondering, I know you didn't get it, but… if you had the chance, do you think you'd want it?"

"To become a speedster?" he asked. She nodded after a few seconds. He let out a breath, not annoyed, just actually considering it. "I wouldn't," he finally replied.

"No?" she was surprised.

"No," he repeated, smiling. "And believe me, there were years, _years_ , where it was all I ever wanted. I did some very reckless things for a while, trying to trigger something in me. I can show you the scars. After a while, I just decided I didn't need it. I got to a place where I knew it wasn't me, and that whatever I could do would be my own thing. I think I did pretty good, right?"

"Did so good, bro," she teased, and he chuckled.

"Also, if you ask me, I'd say the reason it worked for Slade and not for the others is maybe that he was just… predisposed for something like that, and the others weren't." She thought about that… It actually sort of made sense. "Look at this here, right now, you and me, taking a walk, talking… There's no rush."

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

 **HOME OF SAMANTHA & RUBY ARIAS**

It should have been more fun than this, getting to be home on what was supposed to be a school day, but really her mind was too far gone to really get to enjoy it. Her mother had gone off to work, and Ruby was supposed to go to the neighbor's if she needed anything. She half suspected that her mother hadn't just _made_ her go to the neighbor's out of some attempt to let her know that, even though she was too young to go back to ARGUS or to do anything else like that, she was being shown this trust by her mother that she could stay on her own.

She must have really wanted to make her feel better, because the whole time she'd been about to leave, her mother had been going back and forth, coming back for some thing or another that she'd forgotten… like ten times, or asking her if she had enough food, or money, or if she remembered all the numbers, and if she knew what to do in case…

Finally, Ruby had had to stop her and tell her to get going or she'd be late for work. Her mother had looked at her then, and there'd been something in her eyes like the same old mom worry, sure, but at the same time… more. After what had happened not two weeks before, she could guess that was what it was for. She'd gotten one good hug, several kisses, and then her mother had made for the door and actually left for work.

The first hour had been spent, in what would probably have made every last one of her mother's concerns melt away, walking around the house and trying to come up with something she could do that would fully reflect her status as 'pre-adolescent girl, establishing her independence'… before finally coming up empty, grabbing the book she was in the middle of from her nightstand and plopping down on her bed.

When the doorbell rang, she hesitated. All she could hear was her mother saying 'don't open the door for anyone, anyone who's meant to be here has the key to get in.'

Slowly, quietly making her way to the top of the stairs, she'd started to go down, just far enough that she'd be able to see who was outside through the window by the door, and they wouldn't be able to see her. She thought maybe whoever it was had gone away, but then the bell rang a second time, and she could just see someone through the window. They were too far away for her to see more than an arm, but she was almost sure it was a man.

She wasn't going to answer. If they were selling anything, she didn't want it. They would go away. They…

He moved to the left, and she saw his face. She gasped and… he turned and locked eyes with her. Had he heard her? He couldn't have, except… She'd only ever seen his face in a picture, an old one, but she knew it was him, and right then all judgment went out the door. Her father was outside the door, and he was smiling at her.

X

 **BREACH EARTH, SOMEWHERE…**

They were surprised it had taken this long. It had been over a week now since the whole mess had come to an end, over a week since they'd crossed what they figured would be Vandal's deadline before he came to a decision on how to punish them after the capture and release fiasco. But the days had passed, and in all that time none of them had been called in, nothing had come of their discovery… Raymond and Nate had been cooling their heels, literally, in Frozen Quarter, debating on where they might settle, where they might resume their proper lives and activities, the way they had been before they'd gotten involved in this mess.

Involved… Tricked, more like. It had all been some ploy, to use Nate against his grandfather, and in the end none of that had even really happened. In the end, they had seen for themselves the plain truth of it. They had not been chosen for their skills, they had been chosen for Nate's surname and bloodline. And that was not alright. No, as far as they were concerned, they needed to come up with some way to show Vandal Savage, to show all of those men, just who it was they were dealing with.

And then the summons had finally come.

If they had ever entertained the thought that 'maybe this would be good news,' they knew that it wouldn't from the moment they stepped through the breach and into the room where Vandal Savage stood, in much the same position he'd done after the two of them had returned post-escape, his hands joined behind his back. This time however he was not standing in front of a window, and he didn't have his back turned. He was looking right at them, and they knew what a face like that meant. There wasn't even a point in running.

And then there was the other man. As far as they were concerned, he was introduced to them as Curtis Holt. Whether or not that was his actual name, they didn't know, and they didn't assume they'd ever find out one way or the other. All they knew was that, in War, they referred to him as the Enemy. Also, from the moment they'd met him, there was no doubt: _this_ was the man in charge.

They never even got a chance to explain themselves.

They each felt a hand grab them by the shoulders, pulling them back, and the next thing they knew, they were… Where were they?

Then Lily stepped out. She stepped out… They were in a mirror? She'd come to rescue them, she… No. No, she had not come to rescue them. She had come to deliver their sentence. They were in the mirror, and she wasn't. They were in the mirror, and without her they could not get out. They would be in here… until they were deemed to have done their time… if ever at all.

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

 **HOME OF SAMANTHA & RUBY ARIAS**

She had told herself she wouldn't do this. She had made the decision, she was going to allow Ruby to stay here alone, just for today, and tomorrow she would go to school again, and everyone would win… or something. But in order for it to accomplish what she had intended it to accomplish, she had to follow one rule: she couldn't show up in the middle of the day to check up on her. Well, she wasn't doing that, was she? It was lunch time, she was coming here to have lunch with her daughter instead of having her eat all alone, and then she would go right back. Easy.

"Ruby?" she called, walking through the door. "It's me! Just came in for lunch, thought you'd enjoy the company!" She shook her head, not believing a single word she said. But how else was she supposed to act? She had gone against every instinct in her body, telling herself that it would be alright, and that Ruby needed this. She didn't have to like it.

She climbed up the stairs, thinking maybe headphones had made her shouts pointless. But Ruby was not in her room. She wasn't there, or the bathroom, or _her_ room, like she would be sometimes, deciding she preferred to read on _her_ bed. She hadn't been in the living room downstairs, she would have seen… Samantha went back down the stairs and into the kitchen. If she went out to the neighbor's she was supposed to leave a note, or…

No note. No note and no Ruby, but there _was_ something. There was a ring, on the kitchen island. She recognized it easily. It had once been hers. It had been the one she'd worn after Julian had proposed and she'd said yet. It had been the one she'd given back to him when it had all ended. Now it was here, and her daughter was not.

She couldn't breathe. She couldn't… Her hands were shaking so hard that she missed and had to start dialing again four times before she managed to put in a call.

"Jim? Jim, he has her. He has her, he took her. He has Ruby… Help me…" A sob ripped free, and she had to hold to the counter so she wouldn't fall. " _Please._ "

X

 **BREACH EARTH, SOMEWHERE…**

As Lily Stein was joined by her partners, Jesse Wells and Lyra Star couldn't help but look to the tall mirror now sitting at the back of the room, holding the two who had joined their little band near the end, at least, as far as they'd known. The way the girls had seen it, keeping them at their side made things easier for them, and it gave them the ability to use this mistake they'd made to their advantage.

Along with the mirror, they found themselves standing across from three men now. Vandal and Curtis had been joined by a well-put sort of guy, with blond hair and a look on his face like he feared absolutely nothing. This one would be Julian Albert, he of the magic idol. They didn't seek to give him any reason to prove just what that could mean, because with a look like that, he could probably do a whole lot of terrible things.

The three girls were being congratulated. After all, they had done the job they had been hired to do, in every part. They had helped pull some people's focus here and there by kidnapping a friend or loved one. That was little more than a side quest. The real job, the most important one, for the likes of those three, who wouldn't go scouring the quarters on their own, had been in finding this most valued hidden treasure.

This had involved a lot of coming and going, not all of it with any actual purpose except to bury the lead, all the while working off of what information they had in order to track down what their bosses were looking to find. That was sort of the biggest problem, the whole reason why they'd needed the bells and whistles. If not for that, people would have caught on before they reached their target, and if that happened it would all be over. They'd never get the chance again.

Lily, Jesse, and Lyra had done their job. They had found what they were asked to find, _who_ they were asked to find, and they had enabled their taking.

X

 **MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH**

 **HOME OF SAMANTHA & RUBY ARIAS**

The breacher invasion, the Mist weapon, they had been all hands on deck sorts of situations, and as Samantha had called Jim Olsen, he, Wild Dog, had rallied as many people as he could, the Waverider, the Queen speedsters, the Green Arrow and her people, all of them, heroes near and far, even Deathstroke… especially him. Ruby Arias had been part of their extended team. Just a kid, but her spirit had been essential. And now she'd been taken. The thing they'd feared all along. Her father had found her and taken her away.

All of them closest to the Arias family, all of them calling themselves aunts and uncles especially, looked as though a piece of their heart had been ripped out, and they wouldn't feel right again until it was returned.

There was nothing to stand in their way now. No great disasters looming, no crisis. All that mattered was Ruby, and finding her, and bringing her home.

X

 **BREACH EARTH, SOMEWHERE…**

Curtis Holt looked through the small square windowpane in the door through which his prisoner sat quietly in a corner. After a moment he opened the door, stepping into the cell, poised and curious.

"You were not easy to find," he said. "You hid yourself very well, I must command you on that, but then I guess it was all my fault for misinterpreting the situation. I was left to believe that you would not yet possess any control over the power that sits in you. But then… I suppose you really don't have that, do you? No control at all, and that is how we came to this."

He crouched, looking at the man in the corner of the cell, closed in, face hidden.

"I think it's possible you didn't understand it was your doing, not right away, but… over time, evidently, the signs were there. You were not like them. You did not age like them. And you did not grow frail, and sick, you didn't _die_ like them. Death did not come to you. You… brought… death. You brought sickness, and poison, you brought _Mist._ You made it what it is now, didn't you? The air, the water, all you," Curtis gave a low, ponderous laugh. "I think you figured that out, I think you felt so ashamed, and yet you could not die. You would not die, no matter what you did. So you hid yourself away, until my young friends found you. Tell me, what do they call you in Mist, what did they call you, when you lived within the city itself?"

The man looked at him. He was angry, he wanted to lash out, but he didn't. He only sat there like the coward that he was… for now at least.

"You don't want to tell me, that's fine, I understand. It was only a formality, I know who you are. Your name, the one they gave you, when they found you, was Clark Kent. It is nice to meet you, Mr. Kent, truly, it is nice to finally meet you, so much so that I will call you by the name you were born to carry, the name you earned the day you created Mist," Curtis stood tall again, looking down to the man in the corner. "I shall call you… Worldkiller."

* * *

 _THE END (FOR NOW)_


End file.
